1.
Environmental protection
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Environmental protection is a practice of protecting the natural environment on individual, organisation controlled or governmental levels, for the benefit of both the environment and humans. Due to the pressures of over consumption, population and technology and this has been recognized, and governments have begun placing restraints on activities that cause environmental degradation. Since the 1960s, activity of environmental movements has created awareness of the environmental issues. There is no agreement on the extent of the impact of human activity and even scientific dishonesty occurs. For instance, in India, Environment Improvement Trust has been working for environment & forest protection since 1998, a group of Green Volunteers get a goal of Green India Clean India concept. CA Gajendra Kumar Jain an Chartered Accountant is founder of Environment Improvement Trust in Sojat city a small village of State of Rajasthan in India, in developing countries, such as throughout Latin America, these agreements are more commonly used to remedy significant levels of non-compliance with mandatory regulation. The challenges that exist with these agreements lie in establishing baseline data, targets, due to the difficulties inherent in evaluating effectiveness, their use is often questioned and, indeed, the whole environment may well be adversely affected as a result. The key advantage of their use in developing countries is that their use helps to build environmental management capacity and this approach ideally supports a better exchange of information, development of conflict-resolution strategies and improved regional conservation. Many of the resources are especially vulnerable because they are influenced by human impacts across many countries. As a result of this, many attempts are made by countries to develop agreements that are signed by multiple governments to prevent damage or manage the impacts of human activity on natural resources. This can include agreements that impact factors such as climate, oceans, rivers and these agreements have a long history with some multinational agreements being in place from as early as 1910 in Europe, America and Africa. Some of the most well-known international agreements include the Kyoto Protocol, discussion concerning environmental protection often focuses on the role of government, legislation, and law enforcement. However, in its broadest sense, environmental protection may be seen to be the responsibility of all the people, decisions that impact the environment will ideally involve a broad range of stakeholders including industry, indigenous groups, environmental group and community representatives. Gradually, environmental decision-making processes are evolving to reflect this broad base of stakeholders and are becoming more collaborative in many countries, many constitutions acknowledge the fundamental right to environmental protection and many international treaties acknowledge the right to live in a healthy environment. Also, many countries have organizations and agencies devoted to environmental protection, there are international environmental protection organizations, such as the United Nations Environment Programme. Tanzania is recognised as having some of the greatest biodiversity of any African country, almost 40% of the land has been established into a network of protected areas, including several national parks. In year 1948, Serengeti was officially established as the first national park for wild cats in East Africa, in 1998 Environment Improvement Trust start working for environment & forest protection in India from a small city Sojat. Founder of Environment Improvement Trust is CA Gajendra Kumar Jain working with volunteers, division of the biosphere is the main government body that oversees protection
2.
Bristol
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Bristol is a city and county in South West England with a population of 449,300 in 2016. The district has the 10th largest population in England, while the Bristol metropolitan area is the 12th largest in the United Kingdom, the city borders North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, with the cities of Bath and Gloucester to the south-east and north-east, respectively. Iron Age hill forts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon, Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was historically divided between Gloucestershire and Somerset until 1373, when it became a county of itself. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities after London in tax receipts, Bristol was surpassed by the rapid rise of Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham in the Industrial Revolution. Bristol was a place for early voyages of exploration to the New World. On a ship out of Bristol in 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, in 1499 William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was the first Englishman to lead an exploration to North America. At the height of the Bristol slave trade, from 1700 to 1807, the Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock. Bristols modern economy is built on the media, electronics and aerospace industries. The city has the largest circulating community currency in the U. K. - the Bristol pound, which is pegged to the Pound sterling. It is connected to London and other major UK cities by road, rail, sea and air by the M5 and M4, Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway mainline rail stations, and Bristol Airport. The Sunday Times named it as the best city in Britain in which to live in 2014 and 2017, the most ancient recorded name for Bristol is the archaic Welsh Caer Odor, which is consistent with modern understanding that early Bristol developed between the River Frome and Avon Gorge. It is most commonly stated that the Saxon name Bricstow was a calque of the existing Celtic name, with Bric a literal translation of Odor. Alternative etymologies are supported with the numerous variations in Medieval documents with Samuel Seyer enumerating 47 alternative forms. The Old English form Brycgstow is commonly used to derive the meaning place at the bridge, utilizing another form, Brastuile, Rev. Dr. Shaw derived the name from the Celtic words bras, or braos and tuile. The poet Thomas Chatterton popularised a derivation from Brictricstow linking the town to Brictric and it appears that the form Bricstow prevailed until 1204, and the Bristolian L is what eventually changed the name to Bristol. Iron Age hill forts near the city are at Leigh Woods and Clifton Down, on the side of the Avon Gorge, a Roman settlement, Abona, existed at what is now Sea Mills, another was at the present-day Inns Court. Isolated Roman villas and small forts and settlements were scattered throughout the area. Bristol was founded by 1000, by about 1020, it was a centre with a mint producing silver pennies bearing its name
3.
James Bevan (diplomat)
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Sir James Bevan KCMG is a British diplomat and public servant. Since 2015, he has been the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, Bevan was born on 13 July 1959. He was educated at Sussex University and he joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1982 and served in Kinshasa, Brussels, Paris, and Washington, as well as various posts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard and he became High Commissioner to India since 2011, preceded by Richard Stagg. Bevan undertook a new role of Chief Executive of the Environment Agency from 30 November 2015, sir James is married to Janet Purdie. They have three daughters, Jo, Lottie and Rosie, Bevan was appointed CMG in 2006 and knighted KCMG in 2012
4.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
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The department was created after the perceived failure of MAFF, to deal adequately with an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease. The Department had about 9,000 core personnel, as of January 2008, the Departments main building is Nobel House on Smith Square, SW1. The Defra Ministers are as follows, The Permanent Secretary is Clare Moriarty, the Secretary of State wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister that he saw Defra’s mission as enabling a move toward what the World Wide Fund for Nature has called one planet living. Under this overarching aim, Defra has five strategic priorities, Climate change, sustainable consumption and production, including responsibility for the National Waste Strategy. Protecting the countryside and natural resource protection, a sustainable farming and food sector including animal health and welfare
5.
Government of the United Kingdom
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Her Majestys Government, commonly referred to as the UK government or British government, is the central government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The government is led by the Prime Minister, who all the remaining ministers. The prime minister and the other most senior ministers belong to the supreme decision-making committee, the government ministers all sit in Parliament, and are accountable to it. After an election, the monarch selects as prime minister the leader of the party most likely to command a majority of MPs in the House of Commons. Under the uncodified British constitution, executive authority lies with the monarch, although this authority is exercised only by, or on the advice of, the prime minister, the Cabinet members advise the monarch as members of the Privy Council. They also exercise power directly as leaders of the Government Departments, the current prime minister is Theresa May, who took office on 13 July 2016. She is the leader of the Conservative Party, which won a majority of seats in the House of Commons in the election on 7 May 2015. Prior to this, Cameron and the Conservatives led a government from 2010 to 2015 with the Liberal Democrats. A key principle of the British Constitution is that the government is responsible to Parliament, Britain is a constitutional monarchy in which the reigning monarch does not make any open political decisions. All political decisions are taken by the government and Parliament and this constitutional state of affairs is the result of a long history of constraining and reducing the political power of the monarch, beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215. Parliament is split into two houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the House of Commons is the lower house and is the more powerful. The House of Lords is the house and although it can vote to amend proposed laws. Parliamentary time is essential for bills to be passed into law, Ministers of the Crown are responsible to the House in which they sit, they make statements in that House and take questions from members of that House. For most senior ministers this is usually the elected House of Commons rather than the House of Lords, since the start of Edward VIIs reign, in 1901, the prime minister has always been an elected member of Parliament and therefore directly accountable to the House of Commons. Under the British system the government is required by convention and for reasons to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons. It requires the support of the House of Commons for the maintenance of supply, by convention if a government loses the confidence of the House of Commons it must either resign or a General Election is held. The support of the Lords, while useful to the government in getting its legislation passed without delay, is not vital, a government is not required to resign even if it loses the confidence of the Lords and is defeated in key votes in that House. The House of Commons is thus the Responsible house, the prime minister is held to account during Prime Ministers Question Time which provides an opportunity for MPs from all parties to question the PM on any subject
6.
Environment (biophysical)
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The biophysical environment can vary in scale from microscopic to global in extent. It can also be subdivided according to its attributes, examples include the marine environment, the atmospheric environment and the terrestrial environment. The number of environments is countless, given that each living organism has its own environment. The term environment is used as a short form for the biophysical environment. The expression the environment often refers to a global environment in relation to humanity. All life that has survived must have adapted to conditions of its environment, temperature, light, humidity, soil nutrients, etc. all influence any species, within any environment. However life in turn modifies, in forms, its conditions. Some long term modifications along the history of our planet have been significant and this process consisted in the breakdown of carbon dioxide by anaerobic microorganisms that used the carbon in their metabolism and released the oxygen to the atmosphere. This led to the existence of oxygen-based plant and animal life, other interactions are more immediate and simple, such as the smoothing effect that forests have on the temperature cycle, compared to neighboring unforested areas. Environmental science is the study of the interactions within the biophysical environment, part of this scientific discipline is the investigation of the effect of human activity on the environment. Ecology, a sub-discipline of biology and a part of environmental sciences, is mistaken as a study of human induced effects on the environment. Environmental studies is an academic discipline that is the systematic study of interaction of humans with their environment. It is a field of study that includes the natural environment, built environments. Environmentalism is a social and philosophical movement that, in a large part, seeks to minimise. The issues of concern for environmentalists usually relate to the environment with the more important ones being climate change, species extinction, pollution. One of the studies related include employing Geographic Information Science to study the biophysical environment, biophysics subject to the context List of conservation topics List of environmental issues Lists of environmental topics Miller, G. Tyler. McCallum, Malcolm L. Gwendolynn W. Bury, google search patterns suggest declining interest in the environment
7.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
8.
Wales
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Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, and it had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2. Wales has over 1,680 miles of coastline and is mountainous, with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon. The country lies within the temperate zone and has a changeable. Welsh national identity emerged among the Celtic Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, Llywelyn ap Gruffudds death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of Englands conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr briefly restored independence to Wales in the early 15th century. The whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century. Welsh Liberalism, exemplified in the early 20th century by Lloyd George, was displaced by the growth of socialism, Welsh national feeling grew over the century, Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925 and the Welsh Language Society in 1962. Established under the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, two-thirds of the population live in south Wales, mainly in and around Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, and in the nearby valleys. Now that the countrys traditional extractive and heavy industries have gone or are in decline, Wales economy depends on the sector, light and service industries. Wales 2010 gross value added was £45.5 billion, over 560,000 Welsh language speakers live in Wales, and the language is spoken by a majority of the population in parts of the north and west. From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the land of song, Rugby union is seen as a symbol of Welsh identity and an expression of national consciousness. The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to use the term Wælisc when referring to the Celtic Britons in particular, the modern names for some Continental European lands and peoples have a similar etymology. The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales and these words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning fellow-countrymen. The use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the location in the post-Roman Era of the Welsh people in modern Wales as well as in northern England and southern Scotland. It emphasised that the Welsh in modern Wales and in the Hen Ogledd were one people, in particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage, culture, and language to the Welsh. The word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century and it is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan c. 633. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh, until c.1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland. The Latinised forms of names, Cambrian, Cambric and Cambria, survive as lesser-used alternative names for Wales, Welsh
9.
Sustainable development
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The desirable end result is a state of society where living conditions and resource use continue to meet human needs without undermining the integrity and stability of the natural systems. As the concept developed, it has shifted to more on economic development, social development. The concept of development has been — and still is — subject to criticism. What, exactly, is to be sustained in sustainable development, Sustainable development ties together concern for the carrying capacity of natural systems with the social, political, and economic challenges faced by humanity. Sustainability science is the study of the concepts of sustainable development, there is an additional focus on the present generations responsibility to regenerate, maintain and improve planetary resources for use by future generations. Sustainable development has its roots in ideas about sustainable forest management which were developed in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1713 Hans Carl von Carlowitz, a mining administrator in the service of Elector Frederick Augustus I of Saxony published Sylvicultura oeconomica. Building upon the ideas of Evelyn and French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and his work influenced others, including Alexander von Humboldt and Georg Ludwig Hartig, eventually leading to the development of a science of forestry. Two years later, the United Nations World Charter for Nature raised five principles of conservation by which human conduct affecting nature is to be guided and judged. In 1987 the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development released the report Our Common Future, the report included what is now one of the most widely recognised definitions of sustainable development. In 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development published the Earth Charter, which outlines the building of a just, sustainable and it emphasises that in sustainable development everyone is a user and provider of information. Furthermore, Agenda 21 emphasises that broad public participation in making is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving sustainable development. Broadly defined, sustainable development is an approach to growth and development and to manage natural, produced. A2013 study concluded that sustainability reporting should be reframed through the lens of four interconnected domains, ecology, economics, politics, the goals are to be implemented and achieved in every country from the year 2016 to 2030. Sustainable development, or sustainability, has described in terms of three spheres, dimensions, domains or pillars, i. e. the environment, the economy. The three-sphere framework was proposed by the economist René Passet in 1979. It has also been worded as economic, environmental and social or ecology, economy and this has been expanded by some authors to include a fourth pillar of culture, institutions or governance. The ecological stability of human settlements is part of the relationship between humans and their natural, social and built environments, also termed human ecology, this broadens the focus of sustainable development to include the domain of human health
10.
Flood
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A flood is an overflow of water that submerges land which is usually dry. The European Union Floods Directive defines a flood as a covering by water of land not normally covered by water, in the sense of flowing water, the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods can also occur in rivers when the flow exceeds the capacity of the river channel. Floods often cause damage to homes and businesses if they are in the flood plains of rivers. Some floods develop slowly, while others such as floods, can develop in just a few minutes. Additionally, floods can be local, impacting a neighborhood or community, or very large, the word flood comes from the Old English flod, a word common to Germanic languages. Deluge myths are stories of a great flood sent by a deity or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution. Floods can happen on flat or low-lying areas when water is supplied by rainfall or snowmelt more rapidly than it can infiltrate or run off. The excess accumulates in place, sometimes to hazardous depths, surface soil can become saturated, which effectively stops infiltration, where the water table is shallow, such as a floodplain, or from intense rain from one or a series of storms. Infiltration also is slow to negligible through frozen ground, rock, concrete, paving, areal flooding begins in flat areas like floodplains and in local depressions not connected to a stream channel, because the velocity of overland flow depends on the surface slope. Endorheic basins may experience flooding during periods when precipitation exceeds evaporation. Floods occur in all types of river and stream channels, from the smallest ephemeral streams in humid zones to normally-dry channels in arid climates to the worlds largest rivers. When overland flow occurs on tilled fields, it can result in a flood where sediments are picked up by run off. Localized flooding may be caused or exacerbated by drainage obstructions such as landslides, ice, debris, slow-rising floods most commonly occur in large rivers with large catchment areas. The increase in flow may be the result of sustained rainfall, rapid snow melt, monsoons, the cause may be localized convective precipitation or sudden release from an upstream impoundment created behind a dam, landslide, or glacier. In one instance, a flood killed eight people enjoying the water on a Sunday afternoon at a popular waterfall in a narrow canyon. Without any observed rainfall, the rate increased from about 50 to 1,500 cubic feet per second in just one minute. Two larger floods occurred at the site within a week
11.
Scottish Environment Protection Agency
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The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is Scotland’s environmental regulator and flood warning authority. Its main role is to protect and improve Scotlands environment, one of the ways SEPA does this is through the NetRegs environmental guidance service. It protects communities by regulating activities that can cause pollution and by monitoring the quality of Scotlands air, land. The regulations it implements also cover the storage, transport and disposal of radioactive materials, SEPA is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government. SEPA was established in 1996 by the Environment Act 1995 and is responsible for the protection of the environment in Scotland. SEPA is a member of SEARS, sEPA’s mission statement is to be an environmental regulator and an effective and influential authority on the environment. SEPA provides a system of protection for Scotland that aims to improve the environment. So that it can achieve its mission and aims, SEPA has created a Corporate Plan which lists its priorities. SEPA employs around 1,300 staff who are involved in protecting Scotlands environment, the agency operates through three directorates, The previously named Environmental Protection and Improvement Directorate is now known as Operations after an internal reorganisation in April 2010. The Environmental and Organisational Strategy Directorate and Environmental Science Directorate were merged in a reorganisation took place in April 2010. Communications is also part of this directorate, because of its role within the organisation. The Agency Board legally constitutes SEPA and board members are appointed by Scottish Ministers, sEPA’s Chairman and a Deputy Chairman are appointed by Scottish Ministers and the Agency Board appoints a Chief Executive. SEPA used to have Regional Boards that undertook local engagement with customers, partners and stakeholders, however, Regional Boards had been phased out by January 2010 and SEPA has since adopted a new approach to engage with its stakeholders at a local level. SEPA operates Scotlands flood warning service and this is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week, information service which includes direct warnings by phone and online flood warnings and flooding updates through its dedicated telephone number 08459881188. As the name suggests, the Floodline service is designed to give the early warning of likely flooding in specific areas. The service also gives advice on what to do before, during, the Environment Agency operates the Floodline service for England and Wales. In March 2011 SEPA enhanced its provision with a direct extension to its Floodline service. This sends flood warning information for a geographical area direct to customers who have registered a mobile or landline telephone number
12.
River Tweed
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The River Tweed, or Tweed Water, is a river 97 miles long that flows east across the Border region in Scotland and northern England. Tweed derives its name from its association with the River Tweed, the Tweed is one of the great salmon rivers of Britain and the only river in England where an Environment Agency rod licence is not required for angling. Tweed is a British name of uncertain meaning and it flows primarily through the scenic Borders region of Scotland, and eastwards from the settlements on opposing banks of Birgham and Carham forms the historic boundary between Scotland and England. It rises in the Lowther Hills at Tweeds Well near where the Clyde, draining northwest, Annan, Tweed and Clyde rise oot the ae hillside is a saying from the Border region. East of Kelso, it becomes a section of the part of the border. Entering England, its reaches are in Northumberland, where it enters the North Sea at Berwick-upon-Tweed. The rivers valley floor is a field and the relic of a paleo-ice stream that flowed through the area during the last glaciation. Major towns through which the Tweed flows include Innerleithen, Peebles, Galashiels, Melrose, Kelso, Coldstream and Berwick-upon-Tweed, where it flows into the North Sea
13.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
14.
River Dee, Wales
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The River Dee is a river in the United Kingdom. It flows through parts of both Wales and England, forming part of the border between the two countries, the river rises in Snowdonia, Wales, flows east via Chester, England, and discharges to the sea in an estuary between Wales and the Wirral Peninsula in England. It has a length of 70 miles. The River Dee was the boundary of the Kingdom of Gwynedd in Wales for centuries. It was recorded in the 13th century as flumen Dubr Duiu, the total catchment area of the River Dee down to Chester Weir is 1,816.8 km2. The estimated average annual rainfall over the catchment area is 640 mm, between its source and Bala Lake the river is known by its Welsh name, Afon Dyfrdwy. Legend tells that the waters of the pass through Bala Lake. Skirting the village of Llanfor, the path of the river takes it past Llandderfel, the river trends generally east-southeast through the Vale of Edeyrnion, shadowed by the B4401 Bala to Cynwyd road. Leaving Gwynedd and entering Denbighshire the Dee flows beneath other historic bridges at Llandrillo, from here the river passes the Iron Age hillfort of Caer Drewyn and enters the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB. Through its forested valley the course takes it through Carrog, Glyndyfrdwy and Llantysilio, at Berwyn the river passes over the manmade Horseshoe Falls, before picking up speed on a downhill gradient past the Chain Bridge Hotel and its historic pedestrian bridge. First built in 1814, and later refurbished by Henry Robertson in 1870, in 1928 the original bridge was destroyed by severe flooding and was rebuilt in its current form from original parts in 1929. The course of the river takes it through Llangollen and under its 16th-century. The bridge is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument and considered one of the Seven Wonders of Wales, on leaving Llangollen the river continues east, generally skirting the outcropping Karstic limestone exposures of Eglwyseg Rocks. Overlooking the river here is the medieval Castell Dinas Brân, a ruined fortress abandoned by John de Warenne, the river then enters Wrexham County Borough, passing south of Trevor and under Thomas Telfords Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, of 1805, which carries the Llangollen Canal 120 feet overhead. Less than a mile east of the aqueduct at Cefn Mawr, beyond this point the river forms the boundary between Wrexham County Borough in Wales and Shropshire in the West Midlands of England. Passing Chirk and the confluence with the River Ceiriog, the river begins to trace gentle meanders on the ground at the beginning of the Cheshire Plain. The course continues past Erbistock on the Welsh side, and the 5th-century earthwork of Wats Dyke on the English, a couple more miles downstream is Bangor-on-Dee, known for its Racecourse. Until 1974 this area was part of an exclave of historic Flintshire known as English Maelor, the Dee continues to meander past Worthenbury where it is joined by the River Clywedog
15.
River Severn
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The River Severn is the longest river in the United Kingdom, at about 220 miles. It rises at an altitude of 2,001 feet on Plynlimon, close to the Ceredigion/Powys border near Llanidloes and it then flows through Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, with the county towns of Shrewsbury, Worcester and Gloucester on its banks. With an average discharge of 107 m3/s at Apperley, Gloucestershire, the river is usually considered to become the Severn Estuary after the Second Severn Crossing between Severn Beach, South Gloucestershire and Sudbrook, Monmouthshire. The river then discharges into the Bristol Channel which in turn discharges into the Celtic Sea, the Severns drainage basin area is 4,409 square miles, excluding the River Wye and Bristol Avon which flow into the Severn Estuary. The major tributaries to the Severn are the Vyrnwy, Clywedog, Teme, Avon, the name Severn is thought to derive from a Celtic original name *sabrinnā, of uncertain meaning. That name then developed in different languages to become Sabrina to the Romans, Hafren in Welsh, a folk etymology later developed, deriving the name from a mythical story of a nymph, Sabrina, who drowned in the river. Sabrina is also the goddess of the River Severn in Celtic mythology, the story of Sabrina is featured in Miltons Comus. There is a statue of Sabrina in the Dingle Gardens at the Quarry, Shrewsbury, as the Severn becomes tidal the associated deity changed to Nodens, who was represented mounted on a seahorse, riding on the crest of the Severn bore. The River Stour rises in the north of Worcestershire in the Clent Hills and it flows north into the adjacent West Midlands at Halesowen. It then flows westwards through Cradley Heath and Stourbridge where it leaves the Black Country and it is joined by the Smestow Brook at Prestwood before it winds around southwards to Kinver, and then flows back into Worcestershire. It then passes through Wolverley, Kidderminster and Wilden to its confluence with the Severn at Stourport-on-Severn, the River Vyrnwy, which begins at Lake Vyrnwy, flows eastwards through Powys before forming part of the border between England and Wales, joining the Severn near Melverley, Shropshire. The Rea Brook flows north from its source in the Stiperstones, the River Tern, after flowing south from Market Drayton and being joined by the River Meese and the River Roden, meets the Severn at Attingham Park. The River Worfe joins the Severn, just above Bridgnorth, the River Stour rising on the Clent Hills and flowing through Halesowen, Stourbridge, and Kidderminster, joins the Severn at Stourport. On the opposite bank, the tributaries are only brooks, Borle Brook, Dowles Brook draining the Wyre Forest, Dick Brook, shit Brook near Much Wenlock was culverted to flow into the Severn. One of the rivers named Avon, in this case the Warwickshire Avon, flows west through Rugby, Warwick. It is then joined by its tributary the River Arrow, before joining the Severn at Tewkesbury. The port of Bristol is on the Severn Estuary, where another River Avon flows into it through the Avon Gorge, the River Wye, from its source in Plynlimon, Wales, flows generally south east through the Welsh towns of Rhayader and Builth Wells. It flows into the Severn near the town of Chepstow, slightly upstream of the Bristol Avon on the opposite bank, the River Usk flows into the Severn Estuary just south of Newport
16.
Infrastructure asset management
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Generally, the process focuses on the later stages of a facility’s life cycle specifically maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. Infrastructure asset management is a term of asset management focusing on physical. Sometimes the term infrastructure management is used to mean the same thing, in this context, infrastructure is a wide term denoting road and rail, water, power, etc. assets. The first published use of the asset management to refer to physical assets is not known for sure. The earliest adopter known for certain is Dr Penny Burns in 1984, the New Zealand Infrastructure Asset Management Manual published in 1996 is an early use of the specific term infrastructure asset management. That document consisted of seven chapters of resource management strategies for each of two types of transportation infrastructure - roads & bridges and public transportation, the current duress includes tight state and local budgets, deferral of needed maintenance funding, and political pressures to cut public spending. Today, shrinking federal appropriations, progressively aging capital stock, and parochial statuses, the push for more dual-track strategies and not segmented ones such as Design-Build and Build-Operate-Transfer helps in maintaining public facilities. Yet, over time, the government apparatus focused more on start-up capital expenses for constructing public assets without focused monies on maintenance. After World War II, with the policies of the Roosevelt Administration, economic boom of the 1950s, additionally, the federal government began setting criteria and procedures for architects and engineers to comply on federal construction and related projects. State and local statutes soon followed suit, over the years, a large bureaucratic machine began administering infrastructure projects through Design-Bid-Build and debt financing methods. This led to hyper-competition of federal, states, and localities over scant federal resources, Asset management attempts to fill in the gaps of such fragmentation for better performance in infrastructure assets. The basic premise of infrastructure management is to intervene at strategic points in an asset’s normal life cycle to extend the expected service life. Typically, a long-life-cycle asset requires multiple intervention points including a combination of repair and maintenance activities, costs decrease with planned maintenance rather than unplanned maintenance. Yet, excessive planned maintenance increases costs, thus, a balance between the two must be recognized. While each improvement raises an asset’s condition curve, each rehabilitation resets an asset’s condition curve, therefore, strategically timing these interventions will aid in extending an asset’s life cycle. Essential processes and activities for infrastructure asset management include the following, Maintaining a systematic record of individual assets —e. g. g, geographic Information Systems These processes and activities are interrelated and interdependent aspects that usually cross organizational boundaries including finance, engineering, and operations. Hence, asset management is an approach in handling an immense portfolio of public. Also, recently, wireless sensors, totaling 663, have installed on South Koreas Jindo Bridge to detect structural cracks
17.
Water resources
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Water resources are sources of water that are potentially useful. Uses of water include agricultural, industrial, household, recreational and environmental activities, the majority of human uses require fresh water. 97% of the water on the Earth is salt water and only three percent is water, slightly over two thirds of this is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. The remaining unfrozen freshwater is mainly as groundwater, with only a small fraction present above ground or in the air. The framework for allocating resources to water users is known as water rights. Surface water is water in a river, lake or fresh water wetland, surface water is naturally replenished by precipitation and naturally lost through discharge to the oceans, evaporation, evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge. All of these factors affect the proportions of water loss. Human activities can have a large and sometimes devastating impact on these factors, humans often increase storage capacity by constructing reservoirs and decrease it by draining wetlands. Humans often increase runoff quantities and velocities by paving areas and channelizing the stream flow, the total quantity of water available at any given time is an important consideration. Some human water users have an intermittent need for water, for example, many farms require large quantities of water in the spring, and no water at all in the winter. To supply such a farm with water, a water system may require a large storage capacity to collect water throughout the year. Other users have a continuous need for water, such as a plant that requires water for cooling. To supply such a plant with water, a surface water system only needs enough storage capacity to fill in when average stream flow is below the power plants need. Nevertheless, over the term the average rate of precipitation within a watershed is the upper bound for average consumption of natural surface water from that watershed. Natural surface water can be augmented by importing water from another watershed through a canal or pipeline. It can also be artificially augmented from any of the sources listed here. Humans can also cause water to be lost through pollution. Brazil is the estimated to have the largest supply of fresh water in the world, followed by Russia
18.
Waste management
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Waste management or Waste disposal is all the activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes amongst other things, collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste together with monitoring and it also encompasses the legal and regulatory framework that relates to waste management encompassing guidance on recycling etc. Waste management is intended to reduce effects of waste on health. Waste management practices are not uniform among countries, regions, there are a number of concepts about waste management which vary in their usage between countries or regions. The waste hierarchy remains the cornerstone of most waste minimisation strategies, the aim of the waste hierarchy is to extract the maximum practical benefits from products and to generate the minimum amount of waste, see, resource recovery. The waste hierarchy is represented as a pyramid because the premise is for policy to take action first. The next step or preferred action is to reduce the generation of waste i. e. by re-use, the next is recycling which would include composting. Following this step is material recovery and waste-to-energy, energy can be recovered from processes i. e. landfill and combustion, at this level of the hierarchy. The final action is disposal, in landfills or through incineration without energy recovery and this last step is the final resort for waste which has not been prevented, diverted or recovered. The waste hierarchy represents the progression of a product or material through the stages of the pyramid of waste management. The hierarchy represents the latter parts of the life-cycle for each product, the life-cycle begins with design, then proceeds through manufacture, distribution, use and then follows through the waste hierarchys stages of reduce, reuse and recycle. Each of the stages of the life-cycle offers opportunities for policy intervention, to rethink the need for the product, to redesign to minimize waste potential. The key behind the life-cycle of a product is to optimize the use of the limited resources by avoiding the unnecessary generation of waste. Resource efficiency reflects the understanding that current, global, economic growth, globally, we are extracting more resources to produce goods than the planet can replenish. Resource efficiency is the reduction of the impact from the production and consumption of these goods, from final raw material extraction to last use. This process of resource efficiency can address sustainability, the Polluter pays principle is a principle where the polluting party pays for the impact caused to the environment. With respect to management, this generally refers to the requirement for a waste generator to pay for appropriate disposal of the unrecoverable material. Throughout most of history, the amount of waste generated by humans was insignificant due to low population density, common waste produced during pre-modern times was mainly ashes and human biodegradable waste, and these were released back into the ground locally, with minimum environmental impact
19.
Solar panel
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Solar panel refers to a panel designed to absorb the suns rays as a source of energy for generating electricity or heating. A photovoltaic module is a packaged, connect assembly of typically 6×10 photovoltaic solar cells, photovoltaic modules constitute the photovoltaic array of a photovoltaic system that generates and supplies solar electricity in commercial and residential applications. Each module is rated by its DC output power under standard test conditions, the efficiency of a module determines the area of a module given the same rated output – an 8% efficient 230 watt module will have twice the area of a 16% efficient 230 watt module. There are a few commercially available solar modules that exceed 22% efficiency, a single solar module can produce only a limited amount of power, most installations contain multiple modules. A photovoltaic system typically includes an array of photovoltaic modules, an inverter, a pack for storage, interconnection wiring. The most common application of solar panels is solar heating systems. The price of power has continued to fall so that in many countries it is cheaper than ordinary fossil fuel electricity from the grid. Photovoltaic modules use light energy from the Sun to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect, the majority of modules use wafer-based crystalline silicon cells or thin-film cells. The structural member of a module can either be the top layer or the back layer, cells must also be protected from mechanical damage and moisture. Most modules are rigid, but semi-flexible ones are available, based on thin-film cells, the cells must be connected electrically in series, one to another. Externally, most of photovoltaic modules use MC4 connectors type to facilitate easy connections to the rest of the system. Modules electrical connections are made in series to achieve an output voltage and/or in parallel to provide a desired current capability. The conducting wires that take the current off the modules may contain silver, copper or other non-magnetic conductive transition metals, bypass diodes may be incorporated or used externally, in case of partial module shading, to maximize the output of module sections still illuminated. Some special solar PV modules include concentrators in which light is focused by lenses or mirrors onto smaller cells and this enables the use of cells with a high cost per unit area in a cost-effective way. Depending on construction, photovoltaic modules can produce electricity from a range of frequencies of light, hence, much of the incident sunlight energy is wasted by solar modules, and they can give far higher efficiencies if illuminated with monochromatic light. Therefore, another design concept is to split the light into different wavelength ranges and this has been projected to be capable of raising efficiency by 50%. Scientists from Spectrolab, a subsidiary of Boeing, have reported development of solar cells with an efficiency of more than 40%. Currently the best achieved sunlight conversion rate is around 21. 5% in new products typically lower than the efficiencies of their cells in isolation
20.
Rainwater harvesting
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Rainwater harvesting is the accumulation and deposition of rainwater for reuse on-site, rather than allowing it to run off. Its uses include water for gardens, livestock, irrigation, domestic use with proper treatment, the harvested water can also be used as drinking water, longer-term storage and for other purposes such as groundwater recharge. Rainwater harvesting provides an independent water supply during regional water restrictions and it provides water when there is a drought, can help mitigate flooding of low-lying areas, and reduces demand on wells which may enable groundwater levels to be sustained. It also helps in the availability of water as rainwater is substantially free of salinity. More development and knowledge is required to understand the benefits rainwater harvesting can provide to agriculture, many countries especially those with an arid environment use rainwater harvesting as a cheap and reliable source of clean water. To enhance irrigation in arid environments, ridges of soil are constructed in order to trap and prevent rainwater from running down hills, even in periods of low rainfall, enough water is collected in order for crops to grow. The concentration of contaminants is reduced significantly by diverting the flow of run-off water to waste. Improved water quality can also be obtained by using a floating draw-off mechanism and by using a series of tanks, pre-filtration is a common practice used in the industry to ensure that the water entering the tank is free of large sediment. Pre-filtration is important to keep the system healthy, conceptually, a water supply system should match the quality of water with the end use. However, in most of the world high quality potable water is used for all end uses. This approach wastes money and energy and imposes unnecessary impacts to the environment, Rainwater harvesting systems can range in complexity, from systems that can be installed with minimal skills, to automated systems that require advanced setup and installation. Systems are ideally sized to meet the demand throughout the dry season since it must be big enough to support daily water consumption. Specifically, the rainfall capturing area such as a roof must be large enough to maintain adequate flow. The water storage tank size should be enough to contain the captured water. Before a rainwater harvesting system is built, it is helpful to use digital tools, for instance, if you want to detect if a region has a high rainwater harvesting potential, rainwater harvesting GIS maps can be made using an online interactive tool. Or if you need to estimate how much water is needed to fulfill a communitys water needs, tools like these can save time and money before a commitment to build a system is undertaken, in addition to making the project sustainable and last a long time. Contemporary system designs require an analysis of not only the economic and technical performance of a system, life Cycle Assessment is a methodology used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a precut or systems, from cradle-to-grave of its lifetime. Devkota et al. developed such a methodology for rainwater harvesting, the Economic and Environmental Analysis of Sanitations Technologies, EEAST model evaluates the greenhouse gas emissions and cost of such systems over the lifetime of a variety of building types
21.
Environment Agency Wales
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Environment Agency Wales, was, until 31 March 2013, a Welsh Government Sponsored Body, while also being part of the Environment Agency for England and Wales. Its principal aims were to protect and improve the environment in Wales and it had an operational area defined along its Eastern boundary by the catchments of the River Dee and the River Wye. The Agency also had a public facing boundary which corresponded to the boundary of Wales. On 1 April 2013 the organisation was merged with the Countryside Council for Wales and Forestry Commission Wales into a single environmental body, Environment Agency Wales role included, reducing industry’s impacts on the environment, enforcing pollution legislation and reducing the harm caused by flooding and pollution incidents. It also oversaw the management of waste, water resources and freshwater fisheries, cleaning up rivers, coastal waters and contaminated land, by influencing others to change attitudes and behaviour, it aimed to make the environment cleaner and healthier for people and wildlife. Environment Agency Wales managed the risk of flooding rivers and the sea in Wales. To do this, Environment Agency Wales built, maintained and operated flood defences to protect people and it also issued flood warnings and works with communities at risk of flooding to help them find appropriate solutions to flood risk through its Flood Awareness Wales programme. When a flood happened, Environment Agency Wales worked with the services and local authorities to minimise the harm to people. Environment Agency Wales was responsible for ensuring that environmental legislation was implemented properly on behalf of the Welsh, where people and businesses needed to take water for drinking, industry and irrigation, Environment Agency Wales ensured that they did so without damaging the environment. To do this, Environment Agency Wales gave advice and issued permits, authorisations, when pollution occurred, Environment Agency Wales worked to minimise any environmental damage, identify the source and stop any further pollution. If businesses failed to comply with their permits, and pollution occurred, Environment Agency Wales took enforcement action against them, Environment Agency Wales also led on dealing with serious waste crime which is often organised, large-scale and profitable. Priority waste crime types include large-scale illegal dumping, illegal waste sites and it also dealt with high risk activities such as illegal disposal of wastes, where there was an actual or imminent threat of significant flooding or pollution. Environment Agency Wales created and improved habitats for fish and other water-based wildlife such as salmon and helped species that were at risk and it also managed licences for fishing and navigation, so that people in Wales – and people visiting Wales – could enjoy the water environment. Environment Agency Wales licensed water abstractions from groundwater, rivers and lakes to ensure that the needs of people and business were met whilst protecting the environment and wildlife. For the fourth year running, Stonewall Cymru, named Environment Agency Wales as the best place to work in Wales for lesbian, gay, Environment Agency Wales was accredited to both the ISO14001 and EMAS environmental management standard. Environment Agency Wales had three areas, South East Wales, South West Wales and North Wales. Its other departments were Flood and Coastal Risk Management, Corporate Services, Human Resources, Finance, all departments reported to the Director of Environment Agency Wales, Chris Mills. The committees were set up by Parliament under the Environment Act 1995, the committees were made up of external members who were elected to stand on the committee because they had the relevant expertise
22.
Thames Barrier
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The Thames Barrier is a movable flood barrier in the River Thames east of Central London. When needed, it is closed during high tide, at low tide it can be opened to restore the flow towards the sea. The report of Sir Hermann Bondi on the North Sea flood of 1953 affecting parts of the Thames Estuary, London is vulnerable to flooding and from heavy tides closing in. A storm surge generated by low pressure in the Atlantic Ocean sometimes tracks eastwards past the north of Scotland, the surge tide is funnelled down the North Sea which narrows towards the English Channel and the Thames Estuary. If the storm surge coincides with a tide, dangerously high water levels can occur in the Thames Estuary. The threat has increased over time due to the slow but continuous rise in water levels over the centuries. In the 1928 Thames flood,14 people died, after 300 people died in the UK in the North Sea flood of 1953, the issue gained new prominence. Early proposals for a control system were stymied by the need for a large opening in the barrier to allow for vessels from the London docks to pass through. The concept of the gates was devised by Charles Draper. In 1969, from his parents house in Pellatt Grove, Wood Green, London, the novel rotating cylinders were based on the design of the taps on his gas cooker. The barrier was designed by Rendel, Palmer and Tritton for the Greater London Council and tested at the Hydraulics Research Station, Wallingford. The site at New Charlton was chosen because of the straightness of the banks. Work began at the site in 1974 and construction, which had been undertaken by a Costain/Hollandsche Beton Maatschappij/Tarmac Construction consortium, was largely complete by 1982. The gates of the barrier were made by Cleveland Bridge UK Ltd at Dents Wharf on the River Tees, in addition to the barrier, the flood defences for 11 miles down river were raised and strengthened. The barrier was officially opened on 8 May 1984 by Queen Elizabeth II, total construction cost was around £534 million with an additional £100 million for river defences. Built across a 520-metre wide stretch of the river, the barrier divides the river into four 61-metre, there are also four smaller non-navigable channels between nine concrete piers and two abutments. All the gates are hollow and made of steel up to 40 millimetres thick, the gates are filled with water when submerged and empty as they emerge from the river. The four large gates are 20.1 metres high and weigh 3,700 tonnes
23.
Internal drainage board
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The area of an IDB is not determined by county or metropolitan council boundaries, but by water catchment areas within a given region. IDBs are geographically concentrated in the Broads, Fens in East Anglia and Lincolnshire, Somerset Levels, IDBs are not responsible for watercourses designated as main rivers within their drainage districts, the supervision of these watercourses is undertaken by the Environment Agency. Some IDBs may also have duties, powers and responsibilities under specific legislation for the district. IDBs are responsible to Defra from whom all legislation/regulations affecting them are issued, the work of an IDB is closely linked with that of the Environment Agency which has a range of functions providing a supervisory role over them. Defra brought IDBs under the jurisdiction of the Local Government Ombudsman from 1 April 2004 and this move was aimed to increase the accountability of IDBs to the general public who have an interest in the way that IDBs are run and operate by providing an independent means of review. At this time Defra also revised and re-issued model statutory rules and procedures under which IDBs operate, there are 114 internal drainage boards in Great Britain in 2012,113 in England and 3 in Wales. IDBs cover 1.2 million hectares of England and 28,500 hectares of Wales, the largest IDB covers 52,757 hectares and the smallest 182 hectares. 24 of the county councils in England include one or more IDB in their area as do six metropolitan districts, the Association of Drainage Authorities holds a definitive record of all IDBs within England and Wales and their boundaries. The Environment Agency acts as the drainage board for 8 internal drainage districts in England and 11 IDDs in Wales. IDBs have an important role in reducing flood risk management of water levels. The water level management activities of internal drainage boards cover 1.2 million hectares of England which represents 9. 7% of the land area. Reducing the flood risk to ~600,000 people who live or work, whilst many thousands of people outside of these boundaries also derive reduced flood risk from IDB water level management activities. In fact a recent publication by the Association of Drainage Authorities identified that 53% of the capacity of major power stations in England. IDBs have played an important role in monitoring and mitigating the effects of this activity and have worked in collaboration with the coal companies. The fundamental role of a drainage board is to manage the water level within its district. The majority of rivers and watercourses have been heavily modified by man or are totally artificial channels. As with any engineered structure it must be maintained in order to function at or near its design capacity, annual or bi-annual vegetation clearance and periodic de-silting of these rivers and watercourses is therefore an essential component of the whole life cycle of these watercourses. Many IDBs are redesigning watercourses to create a two-stage or bermed channel and these have been extensively created in the Lindsey Marsh Drainage Board area of East Lincolnshire to accommodate the three elements of lowland watercourse sustainability
24.
Coastal erosion
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Coastal erosion is the wearing away of land and the removal of beach or dune sediments by wave action, tidal currents, wave currents, drainage or high winds. The study of erosion and sediment redistribution is called coastal morphodynamics and it may be caused by hydraulic action, abrasion, impact and corrosion. On non-rocky coasts, coastal erosion results in rock formations in areas where the coastline contains rock layers or fracture zones with varying resistance to erosion. Softer areas become eroded much faster than harder ones, which result in landforms such as tunnels, bridges, columns. Over time the coast generally evens out, the softer areas fill up with sediment eroded from hard areas, and rock formations are eroded away. Also abrasion commonly happens in areas where there are strong winds, loose sand, the blowing of millions of sharp sand grains creates a sandblasting effect. This effect helps to erode, smooth and polish rocks, the definition of abrasion is grinding and wearing away of rock surfaces through the mechanical action of other rock or sand particles. A place where erosion of a cliffed coast has occurred is at Wamberal in the Central Coast region of New South Wales where houses built on top of the cliffs began to collapse into the sea. This is due to waves causing erosion of the sedimentary material on which the buildings foundations sit. Dunwich, the capital of the English medieval wool trade, disappeared over the period of a few due to redistribution of sediment by waves. The California coast, which has soft cliffs of sedimentary rock and is heavily populated, devils Slide, Santa Barbara, the coast just north of Ensenada, and Malibu are regularly affected. The Holderness coastline on the east coast of England, just north of the Humber Estuary, is one of the fastest eroding coastline in Europe due to its soft clay cliffs and powerful waves. Groynes and other measures to keep it under control has only accelerated the process further down the coast, because longshore drift starves the beaches of sand. The White Cliffs of Dover have also been affected, fort Ricasoli, a historic 17th century fortress in Malta is being threatened by coastal erosion, as it was built on a fault in the headland which is prone to erosion. A small part of one of the walls has already collapsed since the land under it has eroded. Hydraulic action occurs when striking a cliff face compress air in cracks on the cliff face. This exerts pressure on the rock, and can progressively splinter. Over time, the cracks can grow, sometimes forming a cave, the splinters fall to the sea bed where they are subjected to further wave action
25.
Probability
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Probability is the measure of the likelihood that an event will occur. Probability is quantified as a number between 0 and 1, the higher the probability of an event, the more certain that the event will occur. A simple example is the tossing of a fair coin, since the coin is unbiased, the two outcomes are both equally probable, the probability of head equals the probability of tail. Since no other outcomes are possible, the probability is 1/2 and this type of probability is also called a priori probability. Probability theory is used to describe the underlying mechanics and regularities of complex systems. For example, tossing a coin twice will yield head-head, head-tail, tail-head. The probability of getting an outcome of head-head is 1 out of 4 outcomes or 1/4 or 0.25 and this interpretation considers probability to be the relative frequency in the long run of outcomes. A modification of this is propensity probability, which interprets probability as the tendency of some experiment to yield a certain outcome, subjectivists assign numbers per subjective probability, i. e. as a degree of belief. The degree of belief has been interpreted as, the price at which you would buy or sell a bet that pays 1 unit of utility if E,0 if not E. The most popular version of subjective probability is Bayesian probability, which includes expert knowledge as well as data to produce probabilities. The expert knowledge is represented by some prior probability distribution and these data are incorporated in a likelihood function. The product of the prior and the likelihood, normalized, results in a probability distribution that incorporates all the information known to date. The scientific study of probability is a development of mathematics. Gambling shows that there has been an interest in quantifying the ideas of probability for millennia, there are reasons of course, for the slow development of the mathematics of probability. Whereas games of chance provided the impetus for the study of probability. According to Richard Jeffrey, Before the middle of the century, the term probable meant approvable. A probable action or opinion was one such as people would undertake or hold. However, in legal contexts especially, probable could also apply to propositions for which there was good evidence, the sixteenth century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano demonstrated the efficacy of defining odds as the ratio of favourable to unfavourable outcomes
26.
West Sussex
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West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering East Sussex to the east, Hampshire to the west and Surrey to the north, and to the south the English Channel. Chichester in the southwest is the county town and only city in West Sussex, with the largest towns being Crawley, Worthing, West Sussex has a range of scenery, including wealden, downland and coastal. The highest point of the county is Blackdown, at 280 metres and it has a number of stately homes including Goodwood, Petworth House and Uppark and also castles such as Arundel Castle and Bramber Castle. Over half the county is protected countryside, offering walking, cycling, although the name Sussex, derived from the Old English Sūþsēaxe, is from the Saxon period between AD477 to 1066, the history of human habitation in Sussex goes back to the Old Stone Age. The oldest hominin remains known in Britain were found at Eartham Pit, Sussex has been occupied since those times and has succumbed to various invasions and migrations throughout its long history. Prehistoric monuments include the Devils Jumps, a group of Bronze Age burial mounds, the Romans used the Weald for iron production on an industrial scale. The foundation story is regarded as somewhat of a myth by most historians, the Kingdom of Sussex was absorbed into Wessex as an earldom and became the county of Sussex. With its origins in the kingdom of Sussex, the county of Sussex was traditionally divided into six units known as rapes. By the 16th century, the three western rapes were grouped together informally, having their own separate Quarter Sessions and these were administered by a separate county council from 1888, the county of Sussex being divided for administrative purposes into the administrative counties of East and West Sussex. In 1974, West Sussex was made a ceremonial county with the coming into force of the Local Government Act 1972. At the same time a part of the eastern rape of Lewes was transferred into West Sussex. Until 1834 provision for the poor and destitute in West Sussex was made at parish level, from 1835 until 1948 eleven Poor Law Unions, each catering for several parishes, took on the job. Most settlements in West Sussex are either along the south coast or in Mid Sussex, the town of Crawley is the largest in the county with an estimated population of 106,600. The coastal settlement of Worthing closely follows with a population of 104,600, the seaside resort of Bognor Regis and market town Horsham are both large towns. Chichester, the county town, has a cathedral and city status, much of the coastal town population is part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. Rustington and Southwater are the next largest settlements in the county, there are several more towns in West Sussex, although they are of similar size to other villages. The smaller towns of the county are Arundel, Midhurst, Petworth, Selsey, the larger villages are Billingshurst, Copthorne, Crawley Down, Cuckfield, Henfield, Hassocks, Hurstpierpoint, Lindfield, Pulborough and Storrington. The current total population of the county makes up 1. 53% of Englands population, West Sussex is bordered by Hampshire to the west, Surrey to the north and East Sussex to the east
27.
Jubilee River
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The Jubilee River is a hydraulic channel in southern England. It is 11.6 km long and is on average 45 metres wide and it achieves this by taking water from the left bank of the Thames upstream of Boulters Lock near Maidenhead and returning it via the north bank downstream of Eton, Berkshire. Although successful in its aims, residents of villages downstream claim it has increased flooding. The Environment Agency commissioned the design and construction of the river which cost £110 million, when it was formed, the channel was the largest man-made river project undertaken in Britain in modern times, and the second largest in Europe. As well as creating the channel and its various flow control mechanisms, one of these, Dorney Bridge, took the channel through a 19th-century Brunel railway embankment while it continued to carry main line trains between London and Bristol. The Victorian tall embankment had to be frozen, bored through creating a large tunnel, the channel also had to be taken through Black Potts Viaduct, which carries the railway line built to Windsor & Eton Riverside station. Protective structures had to be put in place to preserve its structural integrity, conception to fruition took about twenty years. Defects in parts of the came to light in January 2003. The channel saw flows well short of its flow capacity but weir failure and costly bed and bank erosion occurred, leading to a programme of repair. The Environment Agency sued the lead consultants for recovery of those remedial costs. The name used during planning was the Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton Flood Alleviation Scheme, the choice of a name for the river was put to the local population in a poll. On most analyses the Jubilee River looks and acts like a natural river and its banks have artificially constructed wildlife habitats intended to replace those lost from the banks of the Thames during urban expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries. During construction 38 hectares of reed beds and 5 hectares of wet woodland were laid down, the river is well used by walkers, runners, swimmers, wildlife enthusiasts and cyclists, a footpath combined with National Cycle Route 61 runs along virtually its entire length. A wide variety of life can be seen along the river, including green woodpeckers, cormorants, lapwing. Wraysbury had also suffered significant flooding in 2003, the Environment Agency in the 2010s is undertaking a widening and dredging programme of Thames works to assist in downstream flows
28.
Helpline
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A helpline is a telephone service which offers help to those who call. Many helpline services now offer more than telephone support - offering access to information, advice or customer service via telephone, email, Hotline, is also sometimes used to refer to Helpline. A helpline can provide support to person in distress in its minimalistic form. It may help the individual Services include User Assistance telephone counseling, medical hotlines, insolvency hotlines, crisis hotlines, telephone counseling Hotline Single Non-Emergency Number Helpline Database
29.
Met Office
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The Met Office is the United Kingdoms national weather service. It is an agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy led by CEO, Rob Varley and chief scientist. The Met Office makes meteorological predictions across all timescales from weather forecasts to climate change, the Met Office was established in 1854 as a small department within the Board of Trade under Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy as a service to mariners. The loss of the vessel, the Royal Charter, and 459 lives off the coast of Anglesey in a violent storm in October 1859 led to the first gale warning service. FitzRoy established a network of 15 coastal stations from which visual gale warnings could be provided for ships at sea, the new electric telegraph enabled rapid dissemination of warnings and also led to the development of an observational network which could then be used to provide synoptic analysis. The Met Office started in 1861 to provide forecasts to newspapers. Publication of forecasts ceased in May 1866 after FitzRoy’s death but recommenced in April 1879, in 1936 the Met Office split with services to the Royal Navy being provided by its own forecasting services. It became an agency of the Ministry of Defence in April 1990. It has a worldwide presence – including a centre in Aberdeen. Royal Navy weather forecasts are provided by naval officers, not Met Office personnel. The Shipping Forecast is produced by the Met Office and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, the Met Office issues Severe Weather Warnings for the United Kingdom through the National Severe Weather Warning Service. These warn of events that may affect transport infrastructure and endanger peoples lives. In March 2008, the system was improved and a new stage of warning was introduced, on 10 November, the first named storm was Abigail. The principal weather products for UK customers are 36-hour forecasts from the operational 1, the Met Offices Global Model forecast has consistently been in the top 3 for global weather forecast performance in independent verification to WMO standards. Products for other regions of the globe are sold to customers abroad, if necessary, forecasters may make adjustments to the computer forecasts. Data is stored in the Met Offices own PP-format, formed in 2009, the Flood Forecasting Centre is a joint venture between the Environment Agency and the Met Office to provide flood risk guidance for England and Wales. The Centre is jointly staffed from both parent organisations and is based in the Operations Centre at the Met Office headquarters in Exeter, in Scotland this role is performed by the Scottish Flood Forecasting Service, a joint venture between the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Met Office. The Met Office makes seasonal forecasts and distributes them to customers and users globally, Met Office research has broken new ground in seasonal forecasting for the extratropics and has demonstrated its abilities in its seasonal predictions of the North Atlantic Oscillation
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