Hazard Risk Resilience Magazine Summer 2014 by IHRR

Mitigating Earthquake Risk Risk Society in the Middle Ages GM Dilemmas in the Developing World Securitising Sport Mega Events

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SPECIAL ISSUE

Volume 1 | No 3 | Summer 2014

INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | PERSPECTIVES

Welcome to Issue 3 of Hazard Risk Resilience

Research highlights A roundup of research findings in hazard, risk, and resilience from Durham University

Features WE ARE DELIGHTED to present this special issue of HRR which reports on exciting research linked to the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University. This issue illustrates the scale and scope of research in risk carried out by individuals and research teams throughout the university, which IHRR seeks to encourage and promote. The examples reported here represent very diverse perspectives, which contribute to the ‘big picture’ of hazards in the natural and socioeconomic environment, and the risks they present. This issue also addresses how we can effectively build resilience, enhancing our capacity to face the challenges and maximise the potential benefits involved in ‘living with risk’. Articles in this issue discuss various aspects of potential hazards and risks faced by people in different parts of the world, especially research on risks associated with earthquakes, landslides, and other geohazards. In the UK and many other countries coastal erosion is a major risk that many communities live with. A new Durham research project on coastal behaviour led by Dr Nick Rosser is helping to enhance methods of predicting landslide risk and thereby build resilience. Also, in our interview with Durham PhD student Hanna Ruszczyk, who is generously supported by an individual donor to Durham University, we present her postgraduate research on mitigating earthquake risk and building resilience in Nepal. While much geohazard research in Durham relates to present day conditions, there is much we can learn from the past about how societies can build resilience to risk. Professor Chris Gerrard and Professor David Petley have researched evidence from historical and archaeological records showing how communities in England managed to live with risk and build resilience to disasters in the Middle Ages.

Many important and desirable areas of human activity do carry significant risks which we are increasingly concerned about managing and mitigating. A striking example is provided here by the work of Dr Francisco Klauser and Dr Richard Giulianotti on security measures for Sport Mega Events such as the Olympic Games. Their work is how social, political and commercial interests are bound together in our present day attempts to anticipate and manage risks, and how successfully living with risk is essential, even for the most productive, engaging and enjoyable aspects of modern life. We also feature perspectives on risk in the UK financial sector from Durham financial historian Professor Ranald Michie, our guest contributor, Steven Kershaw, Head of Research and Development for the Coal Authority, explains their approach to managing environmental risks from Britain’s mining legacy and how current risk management depends on historic records of past mining activity. For those interested in following up on the research presented in this issue, we provide references to a number of peer-reviewed publications discussing the research presented in this special issue in more detail. Readers may like to follow up on our research via the Durham Research Online depository (http://dro.dur.ac.uk/ readers/ ), which is now bringing to the wider public all the wealth of content in new publications from Durham University in a free, open access format. This is a great resource and is open for readers to search on many different topics, including research on hazard, risk, and resilience.

PROFESSOR SARAH CURTIS Executive Director Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Durham University

EDITORS Sarah Curtis and Brett Cherry

COPY EDITOR

Solid yet unstable: Monitoring UK coastal cliffs

Risk society in the Middle Ages

Krysia Johnson

Research into the complex

Exploring how living with risk is far from a modern concept

behaviour of coastal cliffs in the UK

Hazardous winds a’blowin’ Coastal impacts of wind-blown sand in Medieval Britain

PROOFREADERS Krysia Johnson, Brett Cherry

CONTRIBUTORS Peter Brown, Brett Cherry, Ranald Michie, Steven Kershaw

IHRR MANAGEMENT BOARD Prof Sarah Curtis, Executive Director of IHRR Prof Lena Dominelli, Co-Director Dr Claire Horwell, Co-Director Andrew Baldwin, Co-Director Prof Dave Petley, Wilson Chair in Hazard and Risk Dr Andrew Baldwin, Co-Director Prof Nicholas Saul, Co-Director Dr Nick Rosser, Board Member Dr Graham Coates, Board Member

DESIGN wearewarm.com

PRINTER Alphagraphics

Interviews Mitigating earthquake risk and building resilience in Nepal

Interview with Hanna Ruszczyk

Our food, our future: GM dilemmas in the developing world

Interview with Dr Susana Carro-Ripalda

Perspectives Securitising Sport Mega Events Findings on Sport Mega Events reveal that these are far more complex and dynamic than is normally realised

Managing environmental risks from Britain’s mining legacy

Reputational risk in the UK financial sector with Professor Ranald Michie

Steven Kershaw explains the risks left by coal mining in Britain and how they can be managed

Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience Durham University DH1 3LE +44 (0)191 334 2257 ihrr.admin@durham.ac.uk www.durham.ac.uk/ihrr © Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Durham University 2014. All articles may not be reproduced without written permission. We are grateful to all those contributing to HRR. All views and opinions expressed in HRR do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience.

No 3

INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | PERSPECTIVES

Informal care networks come to the rescue for communities in need Local knowledge sharing builds resilience of care services for older people to extreme weather AN ARTICLE LED BY Dr Jonathan Wistow on older people’s care from the BIOPICCC project, finds that local knowledge sharing can build resilience of health and social care services for older people in the UK to extreme weather events, such as prolonged cold weather, heat waves, and floods. The study is based on interviews and focus group discussions with older residents in the UK aged 66–81, local health and social care providers, and resilience and climate change managers. Authors of the study recommend that formal and informal systems of care need to be integrated in order to better prepare for emergencies and associated risks involving extreme weather. Local cooperation between family and friendship support, and public sector providers can mitigate health network discontinuities that potentially harm older people’s health and sense of wellbeing. Involving all parties in preparing for extreme weather, including service providers, infrastructures, and older people themselves, could allow for better

delivery of health and social care services to older people during extreme weather events. Views of both older people and health service providers help identify the resilience of infrastructures and service agencies. The study involved researchers in social work, social policy, sociology, health care, psychosocial development, geography, and engineering.

KEY FINDING: Accumulation of local knowledge by service providers can aid local preparation for extreme weather events in a changing climate.

Wistow, J., Dominelli, L., Oven, K., Dunn, C., Curtis, S. (2013) The role of formal and informal networks in supporting older people’s care during extreme weather events. Policy & Politics. Online: http://bit.ly/1m4iLOB Below: Satellite image of 2003 heat wave across Europe. (NASA)

A STUDY BY Professor Lena Dominelli finds that informal care embedded within local communities in the UK is in some cases more sustainable in addressing the needs of vulnerable populations than formal systems in place. Public and informal care services often come to the assistance of private care providers. These networks of informal support appear to be maintained primarily by women who are often relied upon when formal care systems fail. Dominelli finds that a combination of self-help and informal care from women is filling the growing gap left by crumbling infrastructures and formal care systems, especially when calamitous events such as those caused by extreme weather occur. While these informal networks promote community resilience in caring for vulnerable citizens, they may also be vulnerable to increasing cuts in funding for public care services. The increasing demands placed on informal carers (especially women) may become unsustainable in the long-term.

KEY FINDING: Strong sense of community and social capital are essential for communities to sustain themselves as they are the ‘social glue’ that holds communities together during times of crisis.

Dominelli, L. (2013) Mind the Gap: Built Infrastructures, Sustainable Caring Relations and Resilient Communities in Extreme Weather Events. Australian Social Work, 66 (2), pp. 204–217.

Connections with local communities allow for more effective delivery of humanitarian aid INTERNATIONALISATION with regard to humanitarian aid is about linking the local needs of communities affected by disaster with global assistance and resources. But in practice internationalisation may not always respect the values, cultures and perspectives unique to a specific locality that is receiving aid. Researchers living near where a disaster takes place, and who are familiar with the local languages, are usually better placed to empower affected communities. A study authored by Professor Lena Dominelli published in International Social Work draws on the outputs of a unique Durham University research project based in Sri Lanka ‘Internationalising Institutional and Professional Practices’, during the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Findings published in the paper are based on 368 in-depth interviews involving a cross-section of stakeholders, an online survey and 10 focus groups in 12 villages in southern Sri Lanka. Dominelli recommends that practices that attempt to assimilate cultural diversity from a Western perspective are likely to undermine people’s lifestyles and cultures, and should be avoided. Moreover, empowering research processes on this subject should also develop links with local partners involved in delivering humanitarian aid. While the research shows that help during the immediate aftermath of the

disaster was welcome, exchanges were not always equal, with some people not receiving the support they needed. Villagers interviewed for the study suggested that aid donors could improve the situation by doing more effective assessments of needs, providing clearer criteria for who was entitled to what, making all levels of the aid process transparent, and building better systems of resource allocation and distribution, along with making other recommendations. Observing local culture, traditions and languages, promotes ‘empowering aid processes’ allowing humanitarian assistance to improve the quality of life in disaster-affected communities during the aftermath and long-term reconstruction.

An enlightened approach to corporate governance

collective interests in the decision-making process of these systemically important corporations. The result would be a democratic underpinning of the management of these firms and their social legitimisation. More practically it would represent a gatekeeping function for monitoring risk.

RECENT RESEARCH from the Leverhulme-funded Tipping Points project by Dr Vincenzo Bavoso investigates corporate law and governance issues that emerged within the context of the global financial crisis. As large public corporations have become the engine of modern western economies, and play an increasingly central role in society, they affect the lives of many societal groups. While corporate strategies are today aimed at increasing the value of shares in the short-term, often through risky practices, the downside of these risks is borne by those other than shareholders such as employees, taxpayers, and the environment. While this is established business practice it is not altogether supported by the law or the courts in the UK and US. Dr Bavoso argues that this largely unfair balance of powers has led to societal imbalances, which have been exacerbated by more recent events, such as the 2007–08 banking crisis. He proposes a new structure for boards of directors of corporations whose activities impact on a wide range of social constituencies. This new governance structure is based on the ‘enlightened’ involvement of the state as a natural arbiter of different

KEY FINDING: Disaster response methods developed by people with local knowledge of the setting may help communities more than ‘imported’ methods. More could be done to make sure aid is fairly and effectively allocated.

Dominelli, L. (2014) Internationalizing professional practices: The place of social work in the international arena. International Social Work, 57 (3) pp. 258-267.

KEY FINDING: The increasing influence on society exerted by large public corporations is governed by a narrow shareholder value approach. A new governance structure is needed to provide a democratic underpinning and a social legitimisation of these firms’ activities.

Bavoso, V. (2014) The Global Financial Crisis, the Pervasive Resilience of Shareholder Value and the Unfulfilled Promises of Anglo-American Corporate Law. International Company and Commercial Law Review (in press) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=2360265 Bavoso, V. (2014) Sustainable Companies through Enlightened Boards: Combining Private and Public Interest in the DecisionMaking of Large Public Firms. European Company Law (in press) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=2362031

INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | PERSPECTIVES

Motives behind internal fraud in the British financial sector NEW RESEARCH on internal fraud in the British financial sector by Dr Matthew Hollow of the Tipping Points project explores the motivations behind acts of financial fraud committed by company employees. In order to make effective fraud risk assessments the motivations that lead employees to commit acts of fraud must be identified. While the study is not expected to be a comprehensive overview of fraud in the British financial sector, it does highlight important findings on the motivations to commit fraud by different levels of employees who work for financial companies, including banks. In the 64 case studies of financial fraud examined by Hollow using historical records, the main motive for committing fraud was for personal financial reasons, but this was not the case for senior-level employees who more often were motivated by external pressures such as helping a friend or family member, or even helping the company itself. According to the study, senior-level offences tended to inflate the profits of their respective banks where junior-level employees would extract usually small amounts of money. For juniorlevel employees personal financial problems such as gambling debts were almost always the main reasons for committing fraud. While they are more unusual, the study shows that non-financial incentives for committing fraud do exist and tend to be from higher-level employees. The motivations for carrying out fraud in the financial industry were found to be similar to other industries.

KEY FINDING: Personal pressures are most likely to lead employees to commit financial fraud, but external work-related pressures also influence them, especially senior management. Risks of fraud can be reduced by paying attention to motives and what takes place within wider organisational cultures.

Hollow, M. (2014) Money, Morals and Motives: An Exploratory Study into Why Bank Managers and Employees Commit Fraud at Work. Journal of Financial Crime, 21 (2).

Manufacturing management celebrity IN THE BUSINESS WORLD so-called ‘management gurus’ become celebrities by mastering their communication skills, especially the ways in which they present their ideas to an audience. Management ideas need to be ‘sticky’ in order for them to gain traction with audiences. The management guru must be a master salesman in order to capture their audience’s attention and implant their ideas. Research from the Tipping Points project led by Professor Tim Clark, Dr Pojanath Bhatanacharoen and Professor David Greatbatch, finds that whether or not management gurus become popular depends on how they present to and persuade their audience during live presentations. According to researchers, management gurus must excel in the presentation of their books and delivery of their lectures in order for them to be successful overall. In the case of lectures, this is accomplished through rhetorical techniques, humour and storytelling, allowing the guru to ‘build a sense of cohesion and intimacy’, although the audience may not be affiliated with the core ideas and values of the guru. These communication techniques make them highly persuasive and make their audience more receptive to their message.

KEY FINDING: It is not only the content of the presentation that makes a guru successful, rather success hinges on the delivery of the message.

Clark, T., et al. (2014) Manufacturing Management Celebrity. Discover Society. http://www.discoversociety. org/manufacturing-management-celebrity/ Clark, T., et al. (2012) Management gurus as celebrity consultants. In The Oxford handbook of management consulting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tipping Points Annual Report 2013–14, Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience. http://bit.ly/1m9Kyye

Spread of smoking behaviour in populations through multiple peer influence

Smoking spaces and patients’ wellbeing in a psychiatric hospital

USING SMOKING AS A CASE STUDY, researchers from the Tipping Points project have developed a new modelling approach for understanding the spread of unhealthy behaviours through multiple peer influence, such as people’s tendency to follow social norms by imitating their peers or to respond to peer pressure. Peer influence is the way that an individual’s behaviour may be affected by people they have social contact with, such as a friend or relative. The model is based on populations in North East England and shows that competing behaviours lead to discontinuous transitions in the overall number of smokers in a population. The study, led by Dr John Bissell, Dr Camila Caiado and Professor Brian Straughan from Tipping Points, is of relevance to health practitioner communities and policy makers because it demonstrates how small changes in a population can lead to sudden shifts in behaviour that could continue in the long-term. According to the research, multiple peer influence has the greatest impact on whether people decide to take up smoking or not. Researchers found that potential smokers who had contact with current smokers were likely to take up smoking themselves, increasing the population of smokers overall. The model designed by researchers also accounts for former smokers who may have a potential relapse when coming into contact with current smokers.

RESEARCH LED BY Dr Victoria Wood and Professor Sarah Curtis explores the relationship between smoking spaces and wellbeing in a psychiatric hospital in the north of England. While findings of the research may not necessarily be applicable beyond the hospital in the study, lessons learned could be relevant to similar institutions elsewhere in the UK or other parts of the world. The study involved discussion groups, observations, and interviews with hospital patients, carers, and staff. Researchers found that while smoking presents a risk to a person’s physical health, allocating spaces outdoors where hospital patients and staff can smoke may have psychological and social benefits. In the study, smoking spaces were found to contribute to the ‘therapeutic landscape’ of the hospital, allowing patients to relate to staff, and helped create a sense of security. Patients who smoked also expressed the fact that smoking spaces were more relaxing than the ward where they spent most of their time, and felt that restricting smoking spaces was actually counterproductive to patient care. However, providing smoking spaces and scheduling smoke breaks unfortunately made smoking a very important focus for some patients, while for some it caused a nuisance. Reasons for smoking based on patient responses included boredom and a sense of disempowerment. Having smoking spaces, whether designated by the hospital or held in secret by smokers, created a sense of community for smokers and also a way to resist hospital control.

KEY FINDING: Modelling smoking behaviours in whole populations can help us assess how health and unhealthy behaviours spread, and shows the importance of the social environment for smoking.

Bissell, J.J., et al. (2014) Compartmental modelling of social dynamics with generalised peer incidence. Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci., 24, p. 719. DOI: 10.1142/S0218202513500656

KEY FINDING: When designating smoking spaces at a psychiatric hospital, close attention must be given to how they are used by patients, their physical location in the hospital, and what they symbolise within the greater hospital environment. Finding the right balance could increase the sense of wellbeing of psychiatric patients, both smokers and non-smokers.

Wood, V.J., Curtis, S.E., Gesler, W., et al. Spaces for smoking in a psychiatric hospital: Social capital, resistance to control, and significance for ‘therapeutic landscapes’. Social Science and Medicine, 97, pp. 104–11.

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03 09

Memory and affinity are key to innovation RECENT RESEARCH from the Tipping Points project led by Professor Alex Bentley, Dr Camila Caiado and Dr Paul Ormerod reveals the importance of cultural memory to the spread of innovation. For the study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, the team investigated the role of memory in small and large populations using a neutral agent-based model that simulates human interactions. They found that long-term cultural memory tends to reject rather than preserve local unique inventions, and that an increase in memory is the equivalent of increasing the affinity or relationship between agents in the model, which blocks influences from outside the group. Agents’ affinity refers to not only how far apart they are physically, but could also refer to the relational distance between two family members, for example, or degree of friendship in a social network. According to the study, increasing cultural memory reduces the size of the ‘invention pool’ and the few alternatives that do exist are not taken up quickly enough to have much of an impact, if at all. The research team conclude that increasing memory may actually decrease the visibility of an innovation, because of the wide number of choices cultural memory makes available to the agents. However, in the case where agents

have shorter memory innovation has a much greater impact, and researchers note that affinity is key to whether that innovation will be widely adopted or not through the agent’s social network. The findings could be applied to a large variety of different innovations from political or scientific ideas to mobile phones or media formats. Further research could include the influence of bias on the spread of innovation, and compare the model to actual scenarios such as the London elections.

KEY FINDING: Ideally, for innovation to spread widely the agents would need to have little to no cultural memory and be highly interconnected. Starting with a small group of agents an innovation could make its mark on the population early on, but over time as the group’s memory increases it would lower the level of impact that innovation would have.

Bentley, R.A., Caiado, C.C.S., Ormerod, P. (2014) Effects of memory on spatial heterogeneity in neutrally transmitted culture. Evolution and Human Behavior, 35 (4) pp. 257-263.

Risk and disaster in the Middle Ages A NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY from Professor Chris Gerrard and Professor David Petley has found that risk management of environmental hazards in the Middle Ages was similar to the way modern society manages risk today. The study focused primarily on geohazards such as floods, droughts, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, examining the social and cultural factors that influenced community response in Europe. The authors looked at historical, archaeological and architectural evidence of environmental hazards in the Middle Ages that provided clues as to how communities adapted to various kinds of hazards, some of which people throughout the world continue to experience today (see ‘Risk society in the Middle Ages’ in Features, this issue). They examined cultural factors that influenced community response such as Christian values in medieval society. In analysing a wide range of environmental hazards and disasters that took place 1000–1550 ad in Europe, researchers found that medieval communities were often proactive in their management of disaster risk and would thus ensure their

recovery from any long-term effects of disasters. These forms of mitigation and adaptation included raising floor levels of buildings to reduce flood risk, storing food over long periods of time, and modifying buildings to withstand earthquakes. Through acts of charity people would share resources and form collectives to distribute food, clothing, and money to people most in need during the aftermath of a disaster; an early form of humanitarian aid. Communities with previous experience of environmental hazards or disasters were frequently the most prepared, according to the study. Since disasters were usually considered ‘Acts of God’, religious or spiritual explanations of hazards commingled with naturalistic explanations.

KEY FINDING: Actions to adapt to and reduce the risks of natural hazards have always been important in human societies at least since the Middle Ages.

Gerrard, C.M. & Petley, D.N. (2013) A risk society? Environmental hazards, risk and resilience in the later Middle Ages in Europe. Natural Hazards, 69, pp. 1051–1079. Open Access: http://dro.dur.ac.uk/11273/

Insights into coastline retreat caused by rock falls Living near large areas of brownfield land can damage health COMMUNITIES living close to brownfield land are more likely to suffer from poor health, according to new research from the ROBUST (Regeneration of Brownfield Land Using Sustainable Technologies) project. Researchers examined the link between brownfield land and public health in England, finding that brownfield is an important, independent, yet overlooked determinant of public health with wider impacts than previously known. The study used data on brownfield land from the 2009 National Land Use Database, which encompasses around 72 per cent of previously developed land across England. Health data for the study was taken from the 2001 English Census, and data on premature death between 1998-2003 from the Office of National Statistics was used. The brownfield and health data were mapped onto ward-level data to calculate the percentage of brownfield land within each ward. The research found that rates of self-reported ‘not good health’ and limiting long-term illness were 14-15 per cent higher among populations of wards with large areas of brownfield land, compared with those in wards with

little to no brownfield, allowing for population differences in age, sex, economic background, as well as other forms of environmental deprivation. Greenfield has previously been found to have a positive impact on public health. Communities that have access to green space tend to fare better because the natural landscape is conducive to lower stress levels and actually has a therapeutic effect. The opposite seems to be the case with brownfield which has an ‘untherapeutic’ effect on the health of communities resulting in more people who live near brownfield reporting chronic, burdensome illnesses such as asthma.

Bambra, C., Robertson, S., Kasim, A., Smith, J., CairnsNagi, J.M., Copeland, A., Finlay, N., Johnson, K. Healthy land? An examination of the area-level association between brownfield land and morbidity and mortality in England. Environment and Planning A, 46 (2) pp. 433–454. Open Access: http://www.envplan.com/openaccess/a46105.pdf

cannot be captured by models alone and requires further investigation as most rock falls are usually thought to have been caused by erosion by the sea only. Based on the team’s data, small rock falls were much more frequent than large-scale failures. While small rock falls tend to respond to weather and waves, with larger rock falls the cause is much less clear. Finding precursors to large rock falls would assist scientists in potentially predicting them weeks or months before they occur. The research team will continue to monitor the cliffs and input data into a model to provide realistic projections of coastal retreat that could assist efforts to manage retreat of the British coastline. ROCK FALLS along the North Yorkshire coast in the UK were found to have an unpredictable, episodic nature that cannot be explained by environmental drivers alone. Research published in the journal Geology by Dr Nick Rosser, Dr Matthew Brain, Professor David Petley, Dr Michael Lim and Dr Emma Norman (see ‘Solid yet unstable: Monitoring UK coastal cliffs’ in Features, this issue), found that cliff rock falls appear to cluster together, and, in some cases, precede large failures. Researchers monitored seven sites along the Yorkshire coastline for seven years using high-tech laser scanning equipment. They discovered that massive failures alone step the coast back a great deal, in one case by 13 metres. This erratic behaviour

KEY FINDING: Patterns of small rock falls that occur along the coast may be indicators for future large cliff failures. Studying how cliff rocks fracture along with environmental drivers provides a more accurate understanding of how rock falls occur, and allows for future planning.

Rosser, et al. (2013) Coastline retreat via progressive failure of rocky coastal cliffs. Geology, 41 (8) pp. 939–942. DOI: 10.1130/G34371.1

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BRETT CHERRY reports on research into the complex behaviour of coastal cliffs in the UK

The cliffs of the North York Moors National Park in Yorkshire overlook one of the most breathtaking stretches of the British coastline. Varying in height from 25 to nearly 100 metres, the cliffs on this coast are rugged and steeped in a rich industrial heritage. Yet these cliffs have been transforming over thousands of years and today continue to change constantly. Since 2002 a team of researchers led by Dr Nick Rosser based at Durham Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Department of Geography and IHRR, have been monitoring this coast to build an improved understanding of the controls on the behaviour of cliff erosion, rock fall, and coastline retreat. Perhaps surprisingly, the timing of rock fall from the cliffs cannot be easily attributed to simple environmental drivers alone, such as rain, wind and marine erosion. What appear to be contributing to the cause of rock falls at the cliffs are more complex processes that remain poorly understood. Coastlines have received more attention recently due to the predicted threat of sea level rise and changes in storminess

induced by climate change. Most attention is given to cliffs made up of softer rocks that recede more quickly, but many coastal areas are formed of hard rocks, and more research is needed to understand how these change over time. Where rates of change appear extremely slow, making them challenging to monitor, long-term data is essential for building a proper understanding of retreat rates and controlling processes. This may be one reason why the causes of rock falls from cliffs remain difficult to pinpoint in many instances. Understanding these hazards is important for risk mitigation, especially for coastal communities, where property values and the sustainability of infrastructure are closely linked to erosion risk. Despite knowledge gained from decades of scientific research of how coastlines change, there are as of yet no methods available that predict accurately when and where rock falls may occur.

THESE CLIFFS HAVE BEEN TRANSFORMING OVER THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND TODAY CONTINUE TO CHANGE CONSTANTLY.

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UNSEEN CHANGES THE CLIFFS of the coast of the North York Moors National Park are predominantly formed of hard rocks from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. They appear stable, with the exception of abrasion caused by incoming tides and waves. But closer inspection reveals that the cliffs are not only eroding at the toe, but across the entire cliff face, although this is easy to miss when observing them by eye alone. Changes in coastal cliffs are difficult to spot because they are sometimes so slow or subtle that they go undetected. Using aerial photography for surveying cliffs is limited in practice, particularly on steep rock faces that are obscured when viewed from above. In order to understand these unseen changes taking place in the coastal cliffs that can lead to collapse, new techniques are needed that allow researchers to monitor coastal cliffs more accurately and over long time periods. Fortunately, there is an advanced technology available that helps geoscientists to monitor the cliffs in ways never before possible. This technique is known as Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS). 3D point cloud of cliffs at North York Moors National Park.

Terrestrial laser scanner.

A TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNER is equivalent to a 3D camera but instead of capturing a coloured pixel for every position upon the cliff, as with a digital camera, it uses a laser to measure the shape of the cliff to build a 3D point cloud of the surface. Comparing this data month to month helps researchers to monitor the underlying changes in rock cliffs that are otherwise invisible to the eye. ‘It’s accurate’, says Rosser, ‘it’s fast and convenient because you don’t have to go near the cliff, and we can capture extensive sections of the coast within one survey. The system captures data at very high-resolution, measuring the cliff surface every 3–5 cm across the face’. Rosser’s research team travel to the same part of the coastline in the North York Moors National Park each month to capture the shape of the cliffs. The laser scanning system is fast enough to allow researchers to scan 3 km of the coastline in only one visit. They have been doing this from the foreshore during low tide for 11 years in total, and now have the longest monitoring dataset of coastal cliff erosion. This makes their research site the most intensively monitored coastal cliffs in the world.

Left: Laser scan of cliff face along the coastline of North Yorkshire.

The data collected using laser scanning of the cliff was in some ways surprising in comparison to previous research on hard rock coastal cliffs. Erosion at the cliff toe is normally used to explain deterioration of the cliff via rock fall, but based on research by Rosser and his team, there is clearly more happening at the cliff face than previously thought. While the cliff face may appear solid and stable, it is ‘constantly evolving’, says Rosser, ‘you can’t necessarily relate erosion or subsequent retreat to any simple or single environmental condition using conventional approaches’. Rosser adds that some aspects of cliff behaviour are predictable. For example, sequences of rock fall are observed via a progression from small to medium to large rock falls. At present, coastal erosion models that only consider how wave action drives erosion may be ‘a bit misleading’, he says. Instead, Rosser and his team suggest that monitoring data, which is inclusive of the rock mechanics that determine collapse, and that operates over the timescales of change observed at the coast, is essential to building an accurate model of how rock falls occur along coastal cliffs.

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ROCK MECHANICS MUCH OF THE RESEARCH on coastal cliff hazards such as rock falls is on cliff retreat – the movement of the coastline – and not erosion itself. Whilst erosion at the toe is important, it is not the only contributing factor to the development of the whole cliff via rock fall. This may be especially true when it comes to the larger rock failures when a larger part of the cliff suddenly gives way.

A rock fall recorded at one of the field sites on the North York Moors coast caused the cliff to step back 13 metres, generating a local tsunami. Rock falls on this scale are not well represented in current models because of the degree of complexity involved and the lack of monitoring data that includes such infrequent events. The timing and triggers of this rock fall and similar failures remain tricky to identify. An important finding from this research has identified that ‘the development of the rock fall is primarily driven by external processes, such as wind and rain, but beyond this, internal controls, such as the fracturing and cracking of the

Staithes low tide. Credit: Emma Norman.

rock itself, control when the rock fall occurs, its size and nature’, explains Siobhan Whadcoat, who is modelling rock falls identified in research for her PhD in the Department of Geography. Evidence to support this idea comes from sequences of smaller rock falls which occur before larger events; these smaller events can be precursors to a larger collapse later. There is currently debate over environmental changes that may affect coastlines in the future, particularly those that can potentially be accelerated by the impacts of climate change. By definition, the previous focus only on the external mechanisms that affect coastal rock cliffs overlooks the internal processes that cause cliff rocks to break down over time. Similar to landslides observed elsewhere, which sometimes occur without an immediately obvious trigger, coastal cliff rock falls are highly unpredictable, making them challenging to model conventionally. A rock fall may, for example, occur according to the gradual fracturing of the cliff rock, via a mechanism termed ‘progressive deformation’, where microcracking takes place within the cliff rock over time. Research in rock mechanics is useful for understanding

Staithes mid tide.

these processes, and might apply to coastal cliff failure, showing the influence of structure, strength, size, and tendency to fracture. Waves continue to influence the cliffs during low tide: breaking waves on the foreshore, but also from further offshore, both transfer energy to the sea bed, which propagates as seismic waves directly to the cliff. Such effects are typically at their most intense during high spring tides where high water allows larger waves to reach the toe of the cliffs where they break. These processes cause the cliff to vibrate, a process that holds some influence on occurrence of observed cliff rock falls. This observation is one of the main findings from research by Dr Emma Norman, who recently completed her PhD on coastal cliffs erosion on the North York Moors coast.

‘A small transfer of energy, say, from ocean waves, could be enough to trigger a rock fall, but the magnitude of the energy delivered by the waves doesn’t appear to directly relate to the magnitude of the rock fall that happens at that point in time’, says Norman.

Staithes high tide.

During storms, as large waves hit the cliff face, there may be a cumulative effect that gradually or progressively weakens the cliff rock. In addition, if a small rock fall occurs, it can weaken the area around it by removing support, initiating a sequence of rock falls to occur over time. This would explain why a cliff along the coast that appears perfectly stable one moment collapses suddenly without warning the next, without an obvious trigger. ‘When a fragment of rock falls away there’s a change in the stress distribution through the cliff rock which then may cause further fracture, and, eventually, failure’, says Norman. Processes affecting the rock cliff may include strong wind action, salt crystal growth, heavy rain or, during a storm, large waves crashing into the cliff, transferring large amounts of energy that can cause the cliff to shake. During large storms, local residents who live near the cliff have claimed that they could ‘feel’ such ground motions. While it is clear that waves transfer energy to the cliff face, it is unclear whether they alone are causing rock falls to occur. Rock falls are complex, but there may be indicators that scientists can look for in order to predict when they occur.

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EMERGENT BEHAVIOUR

is needed. ‘We’re trying to look at those spatial relationships and also how fast that happens through time’, says Rosser.

IN THEIR RESEARCH PAPER published in the journal Geology, Rosser’s team reported on sequences of rock falls that occurred at the coastal cliffs of the North York Moors. ‘Rock falls cluster in space, but they cluster in time as well’, says Rosser. The study identified precursors to the largest rock falls. ‘Even though the monitoring is high-resolution, the data is very noisy’, says Rosser, ‘there is rarely a perfectly clear signal’. This is because there are many different things happening at the cliff face including weathering, but also variations in the rock, such as its strength, along with the shape and structure of the cliff itself.

Siobhan Whadcoat is developing a model that will use the long-term data set on the North York Moors coastal cliffs to simulate these patterns for the first time. This model incorporates failures around joints in the rocks, how failures interact, and how rock falls develop over time.

Identifying risk indicators for rock falls before the ‘big one’ is not as straightforward as it would seem, because the cliff is undergoing so many changes at once at different scales. However, Rosser and his research team have managed to identify patterns in the ‘noisy’ cliff. Whilst smaller rock falls at the cliff face may appear to occur randomly, successive terrestrial laser scan data demonstrate ‘clustering’ of rock fall events in space and time. Small rock falls are always much more frequent than large rock falls. Previously Rosser and his team recorded over 500,000 rock falls, but less than 100 of those made any noticeable difference to the cliff line observable by the human eye, and the changes were too small to be picked up by aerial photography or in maps.

/// KEY MESSAGES FOR POLICY - The cause of rock fall hazards at coastal cliffs cannot only be attributed solely to environmental drivers, such as rain or marine erosion. Rock falls evolve over time and respond to a range of preparatory and triggering factors.

Whadcoat’s PhD research aims to account for the internal processes that cliff erosion models have not represented well in the past. She will also investigate the ways rock falls cluster together, which seem to hold clues as to how other rock slopes may also behave. ‘Overarching failure patterns could also apply to rock fall failures in non-coastal environments, in areas such as Yosemite in California’, says Whadcoat.

- Hard rock cliff faces that appear solid and stable are likely to be experiencing an ongoing reduction in rock mass strength which may in time result in failure.

In researching the mechanisms that control rock falls, Whadcoat hopes to uncover what triggers events to occur suddenly, and to develop over long periods of time. This is important because some of these unique characteristics of rock cliff behaviour are most likely universal, and worth knowing for any community that lives near a coastline or in a mountainous region where adaptation or mitigation of rock fall hazards is of paramount importance.

- A rock fall model that is based on physical data and is inclusive of rock mechanics that determine the collapse of cliffs would improve understanding of how rock falls occur along coastlines. - Precursors may exist for large rock falls, a sequence of smaller rock falls for example, and these provide a warning before the main rock fall event takes place.

Most of the failures the team monitored with TLS were shallow in depth, but would they have occurred regardless of any external environmental drivers, such as wave erosion? With more data the research team will be able to confirm whether small sections of the cliff falling one after the other is indeed an emerging pattern of rock falls. Further investigation

/// REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING: Brain, M.J., Rosser, N.J., Norman, E.C. & Petley, D.N. (2014) Are microseismic ground displacements a significant geomorphic agent? Geomorphology, 207, pp. 161–173. Norman, E.C., Rosser, N.J., Brain, M.J., Petley, D.N. & Lim, M. (2013) Coastal cliff-top ground motions as proxies for environmental processes. Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans, 118 (12) pp. 6807–6823.

‘IMAGINE THE CLIFF AS EQUIVALENT TO A BIG GAME OF JENGA,YOU PULL A CHUNK OUT OF THE BOTTOM, THEN AFTER A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF TIME THE BIT OF THE JENGA BLOCK DIRECTLY ABOVE IT MIGHT FALL, BECAUSE IT’S WEAKENED’. Dr Nick Rosser

Rosser, N.J., Brain, M.J., Petley, D.N., Lim, M. & Norman, E.C. (2013) Coastline retreat via progressive failure of rocky coastal cliffs. Geology, 41, pp. 939–942.

For further information about this research from the Coastal Behaviour and Rates of Activity (COBRA) project visit: http://www. dogweb.dur.ac.uk/cobra/. The research is supported by Cleveland Potash Ltd. Contact Dr Nick Rosser: n.j.rosser@durham.ac.uk

Credit: Camila Caiado.

More than weathering causes coastal cliffs to collapse.

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RISK SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES BRETT CHERRY joins Durham researchers Professor Chris Gerrard and Professor Dave Petley in exploring how living with risk is far from a modern concept

From Estoire del Saint Graal, La Queste del Saint Graal, Morte Artu. (British Library Royal MS 14 E III, dated c.1315–1325.)

About the hour of prime there was a single clap of thunder with lightning, which fell on the tower of the church, and which penetrated into the upper part of it with a horrible crash, twisted the oaken material like a net, and what was marvellous, ground it into fine shreds.

RISKS AND DISASTERS in the Middle Ages may seem far too remote from the concerns of modern society to be relevant today, but in reality some of the ways in which people managed, mitigated and prepared for risk are not so far removed from how society lives with risk in our times. ‘We owe some of our current ideas about managing risk to the Middle Ages, perhaps in a way that most people don’t recognise’, says Durham Professor of Archaeology Chris Gerrard.

Gerrard teamed up with geoscientist Professor David Petley, Wilson Chair in Hazard and Risk, to study evidence from history, archaeology, geology, and architecture covering the period from 1000 to 1550 ad. Their research reveals that societies in Europe during the Middle Ages were highly attuned to risk and disaster, and that medieval methods for mitigating geohazard risks were similar to many of those in use today. 1

‘Medieval societies were as much risk societies as our own’, says Petley, ‘In fact if you look at the techniques we use in modern times to manage risk, they pretty much did it all. They were rather sophisticated, and increasingly so through that period, in terms of how they managed their portfolio of risk’. The Middle Ages were a time when people needed to live and cope with a multitude of different risks. Environmental hazards, such as the 1315–21 famine driven by low temperatures and heavy summer rainfalls, affected the whole of Europe as did powerful earthquakes, Mediterranean tsunamis, flooding and sea surges. The challenge of living with risk has underlain European societies throughout history; indeed, risk appears to be something inherent to all populations regardless of what period of the past they lived in. There are differences, of course, between then and now. Medieval explanations of the causes of risk were more generally based on religious beliefs, as is still the case in some parts of the world today, particularly in less-developed countries where large-scale disasters occur regularly (See ‘Viewing Disaster through the Eyes of Religion’, HRR, Spring 2013). Christian saints and their relics delivered the faithful from danger; religious formulae such as Ihs Nazarenus, depicted in jewellery, were an invocation against sudden death.

Right: Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII. Around her neck she wears a devotional jewel with the scared monogram IHS for protection. Left: A medieval pendant found in Dorset, England and inscribed with the letters AGLA. The engraving on green stone would have been exposed and in contact with the skin (photograph reproduced by courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme).

Widespread beliefs in folk magic extended from the collection of sea urchin fossils, which were believed to ward off thunder and lightning, to gemstones with medicinal and magical effects. Emeralds, for example, were prized for everything from fighting gout to protection during a bad storm.

‘MODERN’ RISK MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION MEDIEVAL EUROPE was exposed to a wide variety of risks to hazards, not to mention disease – this was the ‘Golden Age of Bacteria’. In the Middle Ages, although your vulnerability was in part dependent on where you were in the social hierarchy, everyone had to deal with risk to some degree. While many people living during this time period viewed disasters as acts of divine retribution, this did not prevent preparation and response to large-scale hazards. Tracing how people responded to risk gives a surprising picture of risk mitigation in the Middle Ages that is only now beginning to be revealed. /// CONTINUED...

The Chronicle of Matthew Paris, 1254 Gerrard, C.M. & Petley, D.N. (2013) A risk society? Environmental hazards, risk and resilience in the later Middle Ages in Europe. Natural Hazards, 69, pp. 1051–1079. Open Access: http://dro.dur.ac.uk/11273/

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‘Historical documents and archaeology tell a very interesting story in the Middle Ages and the story that developed is extraordinarily modern’, says Gerrard. In many cases societies throughout Europe were ‘risk sensitive’ both in how they responded to different kinds of risks, normally to hazards, but also to famine and disease which were persistent at this time. In the case of low-probability, high-impact events such as earthquakes, whether people were prepared or not depended on whether the hazard event had occurred before within living memory. ‘If they didn’t take place during someone’s generation or their father’s generation, there’s not the same learning process. There isn’t a memory embedded there within the community that gives them the confidence to respond’, says Gerrard. But often there was a lasting memory of hazardous events, and there is archaeological evidence from across Europe showing that people were proactive in managing them. Low-frequency, high-magnitude events were usually the most catastrophic, because preparedness was lower. When remains of the town wall in Andújar, in southern Spain, were uncovered by archaeologists they told a story of how the people who lived there responded to risk. The wall was destroyed by an earthquake in 1170. When it was rebuilt the foundations of the wall were cemented, and plugged to ensure that it was more resistant to the next earthquake. The builders in Andújar changed their construction practices in response to seismic risk, an early example of a ‘build back better’ strategy. An excavation in Glastonbury, in the UK, revealed a similar story. When St Michael’s Church at the top of Glastonbury Tor was excavated by archaeologists in the 1970s they discovered that it had fallen down due to an earthquake in 1275. During the excavation they found that people had removed the demolished building, identified the areas affected by the quake under the ground and the foundation, filled them with mortar and material then rebuilt the church on top.

In both of these cases ‘there was an understanding to build something that was more robust’, says Gerrard. There are numerous other examples where people in medieval Europe had what would be viewed today as a ‘modern’ response to risk, including examples of mitigation and adaptation:

Ruin of St Michael’s Church atop Glastonbury Tor.

• I n the hamlet of Kootwijk in the Netherlands villagers responded to coastal erosion by erecting 100-metre-long screens to prevent their agricultural fields and settlements from being buried by wind-blown sand (see Hazardous winds a’blowin’ in Features, this issue). These episodes of drifting sand were driven not only by changes in water distribution and dry weather which destabilised the vegetation, but also overgrazing, turf cutting, and deforestation to make charcoal for iron production. • I n medieval Europe gifts were routinely given by the wealthy and by unaffected communities to help with the local reconstruction effort after a disaster. Royalty, the Church and manorial courts all saw charity as their Christian duty. Today, humanitarian aid from governments, NGOs and private donors remain vital in the case of sudden emergencies. • I n medieval Europe there was a primitive kind of social security. Particularly in Italy and in Spain, financial loans and food were provided to members in need by religious confraternities. Lost assets were not replaced in full, but individuals could claim some relief aid to be repaid in part later. This has some similarities to the modern business models of the reinsurance industry, which tries to ensure that premiums will balance insurance payouts over long periods of time, with profit being generated primarily through investment return between disasters. • I nsurance was available in Italian ports from before the 12th century and merchants in the north of Europe trading around the Baltic quickly developed detailed regulations. To spread risk, traders entered into partnerships and allowed third parties to buy shares in their ships. • W hen poor weather threatened harvests, demand for grain, flour and bread could be hard to meet locally and the costs of importation were high. This was the case in 1258–61 when there were global-scale changes to weather patterns after a ‘climate-forcing’ volcanic eruption somewhere in the tropics. In London, grain was shipped from Germany and Holland but to prevent exploitation by merchants during times of famine they were prohibited from buying and reselling it. Carefully targeted food aid with safeguards for corruption is still a feature of government relief after disasters today. • T he value of routine maintenance of flood defences is not a new lesson. Before 1250 in the Netherlands, sophisticated dike systems were constructed to protect farmlands from flooding. But negligence in dike maintenance, not least the mining of peat close by, led to breaches by storm surges and river flooding, and the eventual inundation of reclaimed land in 1421–24 south of Dordrecht. Two thirds of the area remains a freshwater intertidal basin to this day.

• T oday’s disasters lead to questioning by politicians and agencies, just as it did in the past. Between 1280 and 1449 there were 153 royal commissions made up of local landowners and court officials to investigate flooding along the Thames estuary. Estimates of the overall loss of reclaimed marshland ran into thousands of hectares. • A t the end of the 16th century, after a series of earthquakes in Ferrara (Italy) during the period 1570–74, architect Pirro Ligorio argued that earthquake damage was due to inferior building materials and poor construction techniques. He therefore designed a project for earthquake-resistant housing. These are only some of many cases where medieval responses to risks were rational and intelligent, but they also show how people were in many ways building resilience by reducing their vulnerability to disaster risk. Nowhere is this more apparent in medieval Europe than in the Mediterranean.

MANAGING RISK IN THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN THROUGHOUT HISTORY, Italy has been exposed to many different hazards including floods, fires, and earthquakes. During the Middle Ages it also developed some of the most sophisticated responses to mitigating, adapting and recovering from disasters. In examining the historical and archaeological evidence available, Gerrard and Petley concluded that those countries experiencing the most hazards, such as Italy, were the ones more likely to demonstrate resilience. Italy is also a unique case study because it developed large urban areas relatively early and with sophisticated civic infrastructures and support systems ‘you have the mechanisms in place where you can mitigate risk’, says Petley. Flooding in Florence in 1333 cost around 300 lives and left collapsed bridges and houses, mud-choked streets, dead cattle, and ruined provisions, but the city authorities responded quickly. Not only did they construct a temporary bridge over the River Arno and organise food supplies and emergency transport into the city, they also lowered taxes on imported foodstuffs and provided tax relief for those in need. ‘Most of the basic measures for disaster relief were already in place in Italy by 1300’, says Gerrard. In the case of earthquakes, for which archaeology and buildings left standing provide many examples of seismic damage in the form of collapse /// CONTINUED...

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and rebuilding, a key concern was to prevent large-scale movements of people away from the affected area such that, in the immediate aftermath, survivors were moved to a local place of greater safety. Today’s relief coordinators would find much that is familiar. According to Gerrard, ‘After a large earthquake at Vera in Almeria (Spain) in 1518, not one of the 200 houses in the region was left standing. Vera was hit by two shocks at night while people were inside their houses. There was no warning and many people were killed and wounded. Yet there was coordinated action including an immediate assessment of the structural damage to housing and the potential for rebuilding by the civic authorities. Great emphasis was placed on finding new sources of fresh water, survivors stressed the loss of their stored oil, wheat, and animals, financial aid was requested for reconstruction and the military were deployed to keep order. Within a few years, an entire new town was built nearby’. Fire too was recognised as one of the greatest risks, not surprisingly given the use of flammable materials in construction and the close proximity of houses in medieval towns and cities. In 1158 many houses in Pisa (Italy) were destroyed. In the aftermath the city authorities ordered wooden porches and balconies to be demolished because they had contributed to the fire spreading. Across Europe, different precautionary measures were developed to reduce the risks: building chimneys in brick, replacing thatched roofs with tiles, and forbidding the stockpiling of wood. ‘What you see through this period is civic authorities evolving to try to reduce fire risk, implementing the same things we’re trying to do with earthquakes now, such as planning regulations to try to reduce the spread of fire, or prevent it’, says Petley.

In hindsight it should come as no surprise that the means and methods by which European medieval societies handled risk, while absent of any sophisticated scientific understanding of hazard and risk, are in many cases historical parallels with how people manage risk and disaster today. Their understanding of risk is surely deserving of further attention and perhaps there are even lessons to be learned from Europe’s medieval ancestors, especially in the case of floods, landslides, earthquakes, and other environmental hazards.

SHARING RISK A ‘MODERN’ WAY of handling risk is to distribute it across society. Rather than having one group or area extremely exposed to a certain risk it is spread throughout an entire organisation or network, so it is more likely to absorb the impact if in the event the worst happens. The sharing of risk is a cornerstone of the insurance and reinsurance industries today which provide a mechanism for society to pool resources to hedge. But this kind of risk sharing is not a modern invention.

‘I think we’ve become very single priority focused in the management of the landscape. We need to think about how we work with the environment to manage the hazard. I suspect people in medieval times may have been much better at that than we are today’, says Petley.

‘What the prudent peasant tried to do in the later Middle Ages was to share risk as much as possible within their communities’, says Gerrard.

/// KEY MESSAGES FOR POLICY - Living with risk is not strictly a modern phenomenon as people were managing risk in the Middle Ages. In some cases Medieval society was as much of a ‘risk society’ as the one experienced today, and risk seems inherent to all populations regardless of what period they lived in. - In the Middle Ages there were early examples of humanitarian aid and charity along with activities that bear resemblance to modern business models of the reinsurance industry.

In the case of earthquake recovery in Italy, Petley was surprised to find that in archaeological excavations of areas affected by seismic hazards ‘very rarely did they find bodies’. Witnesses talk of pulling bodies from the rubble and he thinks it likely that they were well organised in locating people killed by collapsed buildings, which is actually in contrast to many countries that have had large-scale earthquakes in the recent past. In the absence of a Christian confession before death, every effort was made to recover the medieval dead and to provide an appropriate burial. The repercussions of disaster could be long lasting but European economies were surprisingly resilient; there are very few cases across Europe in which settlements were permanently abandoned as a consequence. While it is true the port of Syracuse, Sicily was left uninhabited for 20 years after an earthquake in 1542, there were other economic reasons for this. Unless the landscape was dramatically altered, as

capital less sensitive to famine. Gerrard and Petley find this to be little different from famine relief activities today, where grain is shifted from one area to another.

it might be after a landslide, subsistence agriculture was usually able to continue, and people stayed where they were. Even when medieval Sicilians living on the flanks of Mount Etna were repeatedly threatened by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, their ruined settlements were invariably rebuilt on the same site or close by.

Scene of agricultural life in the Middle Ages from the 15th century illuminated manuscript ‘Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry’.

The Leadenhall in London had a dual purpose as a market and for storing grain that was provisioned to Londoners in times of crisis.

To confront the risk of poor harvests and famine, common field systems around villages in north west Europe shared the poorer and waterlogged soils between neighbours, each member of the community taking their share of the good and the bad. While farmers were less likely to profit individually from large harvests and to some extent their opportunity for improvement was restricted, the community as a whole was more likely to be resilient during hard times. Another example of reducing the severity of loss by sharing was to store grain reserves to ride out a crisis. Monastic estates, which had the facilities to store supplies, could distribute them during times of famine and London’s Leadenhall granary, built in the 1440s, was designed to hold permanent stockpiles of grain precisely to make the

- People would share risk by pooling resources. The modern equivalent of famine relief was also in place. - During the aftermath of a disaster there are numerous examples of medieval communities coordinating actions on multiple levels to reconstruct better than before, and mitigate future risks.

Professor Chris Gerrard is Head of Department in the Department of Archaeology. Contact: c.m.gerrard@durham.ac.uk. Professor Dave Petley is the Wilson Chair in Hazard and Risk in the Department of Geography. Contact: d.n.petley@durham.ac.uk

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HAZARDOUS WINDS A’BLOWIN’ Coastal impacts of wind-blown sand in Medieval Britain to Saint Adamnan as well as evidence for medieval cultivation which is visible on aerial photographs. The surviving community must have been forced to leave almost immediately with their crops ruined and homes buried. By the end of the 15th century a new church of Saint Adamnan had been established six kilometres to the north at Leask, perhaps where many of the refugees moved following the disaster.

PETER BROWN investigates how wind-blown sand threatened medieval coastal communities

WHEN WE THINK about natural hazards facing the UK,

THERE IS A LITLE VILLAGE ... AND A CASTEL, BOOTH IN RUINE AND ALMOST SHOKID AND DEVOURID WITH THE SANDES THAT THE SEVERN SE THER CASTITH UP. John Leland, describing the village of Kenfig, written between 1536 and 1539.

wind-blown sand is probably far from the top of the list. In truth, it is not the hazard that poses the greatest risk today, but in the past wind-blown sand was responsible for the devastation of many British coastal communities.

Prior to the rapid rise in sand levels at Forvie, sand may have been making more gradual inroads as the archaeological evidence demonstrates animal manure may have been applied to the soil just before Forvie’s abandonment. This was most likely a strategy to remedy the reduced fertility of the soil caused by the movement of sand on to areas of arable cultivation. By this point, however, it was probably too late. Mitigation strategies to deal with the effect of strong winds on large areas of sand dune are limited. Sands can be stabilised by the establishment and maintenance of species such as pine and marram grass which hold sand together, reducing exposure to high winds and preventing movement. But to do this effectively requires time and considerable resources.

Archaeology can highlight the endurance over time of towns, villages, isolated settlements, and individual buildings. With the additional evidence provided by historical documents, the medieval period offers a

While the importance of vegetation cover may have been appreciated throughout the Middle Ages, evidence for its management only appears in the Elizabethan period when

Parish church ruin at Forvie. Credit: Stephen Fisk.

laws were passed enforcing the protection of marram grass, which was commonly used as thatch, around Newborough, Anglesey. Similar laws were passed throughout the post-medieval period in Denmark and Scotland. Therefore, it seems a failure to appreciate the risk posed by the sands, or to organise the community to enact preventive measures, must have occurred at Forvie.

particularly rich dataset from which to illustrate the hardships and abandonments precipitated by wind-blown sand.

MEDIEVAL VILLAGE ABANDONED IN ABERDEENSHIRE AN EXAMPLE comes from the Aberdeenshire coast where sand caused the village of Forvie to be completely abandoned in the year 1413. A storm from the south coincided with an extremely low tide resulting in more sand than usual being exposed to the storm winds, which deposited vast quantities across the village and its surrounding agricultural lands. Past investigations by researchers from Aberdeen University since the 1950s uncovered the remains of the parish church dedicated

The former location of the village of Forvie is now part of the Forvie National Nature Reserve.

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THE LOSS OF MEOLS, MERSEYSIDE ANOTHER SETTLEMENT which was lost following sand encroachment was Meols, Merseyside, where a thriving fishing and trading community existed up until the close of the 15th century. Discoveries of coins, personal accessories and other artefacts over the last two hundred years allow a particularly in-depth picture of this event to be reconstructed. A drop in the quantity of coins from the 14th century suggests environmental conditions could have become increasingly problematic, but material remains continue to demonstrate occupation until the end of the 15th century. At this point a community appeared two kilometres to the south at a location called Great Meols, and a thick layer of sand entombed the medieval remains of the original settlement. Analysis of historical maps has demonstrated that the new settlement must have developed in response to the loss of Meols, with formerly marginal fields reorganised to form the heart of a new settlement. This must have been a time of great upheaval and Meols was not a case in isolation, with a number of other towns and villages, known from historical documents, disappearing at a similar time along the Merseyside coast. This may have been a result of increased storminess caused by changes in climate, but whatever the reason, the surviving inhabitants of these settlements had no choice but to relocate.

MIDDENS: MITIGATING WIND-BLOWN SAND HAZARDS LESS MAJOR sand encroachments could be mitigated or prevented using a variety of methods. Sites from viking-age Orkney provide evidence of the use of middens (mounds of refuse) as a means of stabilising wind-blown sand by spreading the midden material over the surface. At Evertaft, Orkney, several layers of midden were interspersed with blown sand, probably representing a hazard which intermittently plagued the community in severe weather rather than one which precipitated absolute abandonment. A parallel for this practice can be found in Carmarthen Bay, where midden material was similarly redeposited on top of wind-blown sand. Middens were also used to make the Mound of Snusgar, Orkney, habitable and improve the productivity of the surrounding agricultural lands. However, the heightening effect of the midden material may have had negative side effects, increasing the quantity of wind-blown sand trapped by the mound and eventually forcing its abandonment. Thus using middens as a protective barrier in a suitable location can halt the progress of sand, forming a sand bank. This can provide additional benefits such as protection from coastal flooding, but when the sand grows to the height of the fence, a taller barrier, or a new one further inland, is required

WIND

Meols, Wallasey – dunes where a medieval village was lost to wind-blown sand. © Meols Project, National Museums Liverpool.

to provide further protection. Barriers are not preventive measures – they can only buy time. While no archaeological examples are known from medieval Britain, a number have been excavated from dunes in the Netherlands, although at those sites the barriers had been overcome by the movement of sand, and the fields they protected had become inundated.

WORKING WITH THE ENVIRONMENT 3

WIND

1. Dwelling in threatened area. 2. Inundation by sand due to high winds. 3. Midden material deposited in an attempt to stabilise sand around the dwelling. 4. Subsequent high winds cause sand to overcome the limited protection afforded by the midden material, threatening the dwelling.

MODIFICATIONS to the natural environment also provided protection from wind-blown sand for some medieval communities. At Merthyr Mawr, South Wales, documentary evidence records the diverting of the River Ogmore to prevent the movement of sand in the 16th century. The survival of Merthyr Mawr compared with other nearby medieval towns such as Kenfig and Pennard, which were both completely inundated with sand and subsequently abandoned, suggests that these measures were ultimately successful. Similarly, when the oratory of Saint Piran at Perranzabuloe, Cornwall, was threatened by encroaching wind-blown sand around 1150, a new church was built less than 500 metres away, but with a stream separating the new church from the old site. This seems to have prevented the sand moving further inland because when the stream was diverted in the 18th century for

mining purposes, the sand once again began to move inland and the church had to be abandoned soon after, in 1804. Christians loved relics and those of Saint Piran were housed within the church. They were believed to emanate divine magical power which could offer healing, good fortune, and protection. As a result the relics attracted a steady stream of pilgrims up until the reformation. The dunes covering the original oratory held such a spiritual connection to St Piran that they became a popular burial place with sun-bleached bones visibly protruding from the sands. It is therefore very likely that the power of the saint was believed to protect the new church from the danger posed by the sands. For many communities in England and Scotland during the Middle Ages sand inundation was a calamity for which they were ill-prepared. The worst case scenario forced total abandonment and relocation; a failure to address the underlying problem, the stability of the sand dunes, ultimately made this unavoidable. While they may have been victims of a quickly worsening climate, medieval reliance on spiritual protection rather than material intervention made them vulnerable to the drastic environmental changes brought on by severe weather events.

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WIND-BLOWN SAND HAZARDS TODAY SINCE THE 19TH CENTURY, and especially since the First World War, the stabilisation and maintenance of sand dunes through the establishment and protection of plant species has become a priority and as a result, the threat posed by wind-blown sand to British communities has largely been eliminated. Despite this, problems are not entirely a thing of the past, East Lindsey, Lincolnshire, was inundated by sand last spring, causing problems particularly affecting infrastructure. Wind-blown sand is also a problem in many other parts of the world, such as in Western Australia, on the west coast of the US, as well as in desert countries where there are numerous examples. Wind-blown sand can also cause dust storms, as has recently been the case in Beijing and neighbouring regions. With the potential for devastation demonstrated by medieval examples and the increased storminess of recent winters, the maintenance of protective vegetation and active monitoring of sand dune environments must remain a priority.

/// KEY MESSAGES FOR POLICY - Communities have a long history of finding ways to build resilience to natural hazards. Modern preparedness and adaptation planning needs to acknowledge this established wealth of community-based knowledge and experience. - The greatest challenges to communities from natural hazards arise when new, unexpected or very sudden hazards occur. - Today we need to improve the ways that local civic intelligence and scientific expertise can be harnessed together to address changing environmental hazards.

Below: Sand storm approaching in Iraq. Right: Dust storm in the Gobi Desert, China. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team.

/// REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING: Griffiths D. (2013) The Archaeology of Sand Landscapes: Looking for an Integrated Approach. Scottish Archaeological Internet Report, 48, pp. 9–24. Griffiths D., Philpott R.A. & Egan, G. (2007) Meols: The Archaeology of the North Wirral Coast, Oxford University School of Archaeology: Monograph 68, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford: Oxford. Haslam W. (1845) Ancient Oratories of Cornwall. The Archaeological Journal, 2, pp. 225–239. Higgins L.S. (1933) An Investigation into the Problem of the Sand Dune Areas on the S. Wales Coast. Archaeologia Cambrensis, 88, pp. 26–67. Van Doesburg J. (2009) ‘Fighting against wind and sand: Settlement development in the coastal dunes and the covers and region of the central Netherlands in the Middle Ages’. In Klápšt, J. and Sommer, P. (eds) Medieval Rural Settlement in Marginal Landscapes, Ruralia VII, pp. 181–204. Turnhout: Brepols.

Peter Brown is a postgraduate researcher in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University researching responses to meteorological hazards in medieval Britain. His supervisors are Professor Chris Gerrard and Professor David Petley. Contact: p.j.brown@durham.ac.uk

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Mitigating earthquake risk and building resilience in Nepal: Interview with Hanna Ruszczyk Hanna Ruszczyk.

EARTHQUAKE RISK in less-developed countries such as Nepal presents challenges to both practitioners working in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), and for academic researchers undertaking research in this field. Nepal is located in one of the most seismically active regions in the world, where initiatives are helping to raise awareness of earthquake hazards and develop ways to prepare for them. This involves bringing together local and international expertise on earthquake hazard and risk, and empowering communities and governments to build a more resilient society to earthquakes. Hanna Ruszczyk recently started her PhD on community resilience to natural hazards in Nepal and neighbouring Bihar in northern India. Through her PhD she will explore if it is possible to operationalise the concept of community resilience with the aim of developing a set of indicators and examples of good practices that might be applied to different urban contexts. In this interview Hanna explains some of the findings from her Master’s thesis regarding how resilience is defined in relation to disaster, and, using the example of the Kathmandu Valley, explains how vulnerable communities together with researchers and

practitioners engaged in development and DRR, can work in tandem to reduce earthquake risk.

You participated in the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium’s sponsored symposium ‘Successes and lessons learned in urban-community-based Disaster Risk Reduction’ held in Kathmandu. What were the key findings from your Master’s research that you presented to the NGO practitioners and the government of Nepal? My first main finding from my thesis was that resilience as a concept is not directly relevant to local communities. It’s a concept that we from the west have brought to communities. So when resilience is translated into Nepali, the phrase that they use is ‘to adapt’ or ‘adaptive capacity’. As another example, in Indonesia the word used for resilience is ‘resistance’, so it’s not a concept that is easily utilised in the languages of the communities we’re trying to work with. Resilience in the Nepali context refers to social capital to a large extent, that’s what the practitioner community focused on when they were working with communities. People have a very short-term focus in Nepal, their main struggles are ‘everyday needs’, such as dealing with only 12 hours of electricity

per day, chronic water shortages, or precarious livelihoods.

Everyday life is very difficult. People are not able to address, or are not interested in addressing a hazard such as a rare, highmagnitude earthquake. They are more concerned about everyday hazards, such as fires. So resilience as a concept isn’t directly relevant to local people. But it is relevant to the practitioners that work in Nepal, because they’re trying to support communities to build their capacity to be resilient to natural hazards, which can become disasters.

What was the importance of social capital to communities in Nepal? My second main finding has to do with social capital, such as who do people rely on in times of trouble? Who do they celebrate with? This includes their family and neighbours. Social capital is also found in new community groups. In the cities, such as Kathmandu and Lalitpur, there are women’s groups that are organised by extended families within a small geographic area (ward level, the lowest level of the

government) and they help each other through, for example, group financing schemes. The government has begun to ask these groups to get involved in health education and also disaster risk reduction awareness raising. These groups are tremendous sources of social capital.

What about the role of government in people’s lives? When we think about resilience, in the case of Nepal, we think about linkages between people, government, and internationally driven projects. The other main finding from my research was that people do not have high expectations from the government. People said, ‘we take care of ourselves, we don’t need the government for anything’, except for the critical infrastructures, such as electricity and water.

How does earthquake preparation in Nepal differ from nearby areas with similar problems such as Bihar? There has been a tremendous amount of work in Nepal on developing Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) committees on a neighbourhood, ward and municipal level, creating links between individuals, communities, and government. These

Agricultural land disappearing for housing in Kirtipur, Nepal.

DRR committees are now starting to establish their own plans to prepare their communities in the event of an earthquake, and how they would address the reality post-earthquake. The practitioners are organising training activities at the community level, such as light search and rescue, because the first responders will be the community members. It is unlikely to be the government or the army; it will be the neighbours, as it is in most countries.

So a lot of work and effort has been given for training people in search and rescue, and first aid, preparing communities, and drawing up evacuation plans in case of a disaster. There is also quite a lot of work being done in Nepal for earthquake awareness. I am interested to see how Bihar compares to Nepal when I undertake my PhD fieldwork.

What is the role of practitioners in defining resilience and how do they correspond, if at all, with how researchers define it in academia? Practitioners use the phrase in their work extensively. They prefer to consider resilience as an inclusive phrase with

different definitions, and they are very adamant about this. They do not need a commonly accepted definition. The reason is that resilience has allowed for dialogue between different actors that did not occur before, because people were very fragmented in their DRR narrative. There were the development practitioners focusing on poverty and livelihoods, and there was also the emphasis in the climate change sector on adaptation, adaptive capacity and transformative change. So resilience seems to be a concept that different actors can sit around the table and discuss. The academic understanding of resilience is contested. There are different definitions from psychology, ecology, and economics, and resilience as a concept has been around since the 1800s. It does mean flexibility and the ability to bounce back. That concept of bouncing back is the thread that links the resilience discourse in different disciplines, in what we’re looking at in DRR and even climate change. It’s a phrase that people fundamentally and inherently believe they understand, and so that also opens up ways or paths for people to talk to each other. There’s some interesting literature that has come from the practitioners focusing on how to operationalise resilience.

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Residents queue for water.

At the moment do any ‘indicators’ for resilience exist? I think that we will be able to show that there are some aspects of resilience that can be operationalised. In Nepal they have nine minimum characteristics of a disaster resilient community. Several of these characteristics are related to governance, but they don’t focus on the social aspects of resilience. I am interested to see if we could assess what is a disaster resilient urban community in my PhD. The urban context is increasingly important due to the number and percentage of people moving to urban settings in the Global South. Urban areas are more challenging for practitioners to work in. The practitioners define community as ward level, but that’s not completely accurate because a community is actually on a smaller neighbourhood level according to people I interviewed across two wards. So how do I combine those two varying definitions? If you ask the local people for their version of community it also transcends space; some of it is located in their immediate physical space and some of it is in the rural communities where they come from, their extended families, so again you have these different definitions of community as well as resilience.

Bhaktapur residents learning about earthquake risk reduction techniques.

Since large-scale hazards like earthquakes know no boundaries how could countries with similar problems work together in order to foster resilience to environmental risks? I think the ESRC/NERC Earthquakes without Frontiers (EwF) project is one mechanism for the exchange and dissemination of knowledge between different countries. So I hope my work will feed into the EwF project and be shared with countries in the wider partnership. Research undertaken by EwF to date highlighted that DRR practitioners in Bihar are very interested in learning from people in Nepal and vice versa. There are already some links between the two. I think EwF has significant potential to help disseminate findings adapting the learning into different local contexts. 1

How is urbanisation changing Nepal’s risk landscape? Urbanisation is one of the most significant changes that has happened to Nepal in the recent past (after the insurgency). There’s a significant migration of people from the hills to the roadside, and larger cities. In my research I found that there is a lot of academic discussion about the urban and the rural but these are

treated separately. But my research demonstrates how the rural and urban are linked through family ties, the remittance of funds etc. We have to adjust how we discuss linkages between the urban and the rural because they do impact on each other’s levels of vulnerability and resilience.

No matter how much outsiders may tell people they are better off staying in their villages or by their roadsides, that’s not what people want. They want to live in the cities because they believe they have better access to health care, schools, and opportunities for livelihoods; so people will continue to move, but then when they do move to the urban settings their risks change. The Nepalese government is very worried about that. The municipalities are worried about it. The donors are also very much worried about urbanisation because it changes the profile of people, it impacts the social networks that people have. It impacts the housing stock. The new housing stock that’s being built is for the most part chaotic and is probably not conforming to the national building code. So you’re increasing the risk to the hazard significantly.

Lalitpur, Nepal.

In Nepal how do communities view earthquake risks? People are very much aware that the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal lies in a seismically active area and that there’s significant risk of an earthquake. They’re not preparing because they are more concerned about their everyday needs, but people are willing to help each other out after an earthquake. Local communities generally know the scientific causes of earthquakes, but they’re not actively preparing in terms of evacuation routes or knowing where their open spaces are. They’re also not building to the national building code. People need to be motivated to prepare for an earthquake and the government plays an important role. The government needs to enforce the national building code, and to retrofit critical infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, and they’re now starting to do this.

What is the most important thing people in Nepal can do to reduce the impacts of geohazards? Raising awareness of the general public is the most important thing whether it’s through schools educating students who then educate their parents – or the regular public service announcements

Earthquake awareness rally.

about what people can do to help themselves, especially actions that do not cost much money (for example having an evacuation plan or a bag with essentials), then retrofitting of critical infrastructure buildings. Making sure people on a local level do understand what they can do to support each other. Planning and preparation beforehand, and empowering people to help themselves during and post crisis.

Why is resilience not tangibly relevant to local people yet useful for practitioners working with them in emergency planning or disaster management? I think their everyday lives are so precarious that to think of a hazard such as an earthquake that may not happen in their lifetimes is too far removed from their reality. Our issue as researchers is how to make it relevant to their everyday lives, that’s where our job comes in. Regular awareness raising and the government enforcing the national building code can mitigate the risk. I think if we can find a way to incorporate Disaster Risk Reduction into development it would be a more effective strategy. It’s only by including it in people’s everyday lives that they will think about these hazards. And that’s why I’ve mentioned in my work

that if we talk about earthquakes and relate them to an everyday hazard such as fire then we have slightly more chance of success. Fire is a hazard that Nepali people are quite concerned about because they don’t have much access to water to fight it. We can talk about how to mobilise people, how to deal with the fire. One of the secondary effects of an earthquake is fire, and so that’s the way to connect the earthquakes to something that is really relevant to people – setting up community structures for accessing water. It’s finding a way to make earthquake hazards relevant to people’s everyday lives by listening to them, and finding out what hazards are important to them and then linking the earthquake hazard to it in a meaningful way.

Hanna Ruszczyk is a PhD student in Durham University’s Department of Geography and IHRR. Her supervisors are Dr Colin McFarlane, Dr Katie Oven and Professor Jonathan Rigg (National University of Singapore). Contact: h.a.ruszczyk@durham.ac.uk

See EwF website: http://ewf.nerc.ac.uk/

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Harvested native maize in Mexico.

GM soya field in Brazil.

Our food, our future: GM dilemmas in the developing world:

Young person’s depiction of transgenic vs native maize.

Advert for GM crop in Brazil.

Interview with Dr Susana Carro-Ripalda

DR SUSANA CARRO-RIPALDA is a lead researcher on the multidisciplinary project GMFuturos which is investigating the debates, perceptions and practices surrounding GM (Genetically Modified) crops in Mexico, Brazil, and India. The project has conducted case studies in each country, engaging with groups that are normally marginalised in GM debates, such as small-scale farmers, indigenous and religious groups, women’s associations and many others. The project seeks to develop a holistic understanding of the conflict surrounding the development, implementation and governance of GM.

In your research for GMFuturos you have focused on three rising economic powers: India, Brazil and Mexico. In these three countries how did stakeholders in GM, such as farmers, scientists and consumers, respond to the way it was introduced?

From Mexico and Brazil the big message is that GM crops and foods are not what people are asking for or desiring. It’s not what people are choosing for themselves, their future, their children’s future or for agriculture. In our research we found that even GM scientists often complain that their voices are not being listened to. But the opposition appears to be most vocal in Mexico. Our research found that Mexican people, when asked, expressed profound concerns with GM agriculture and foods, for biosafety and political economy reasons. The express unease with the idea of seeds created in laboratories, because they do not know what they are and because they do not trust the seed companies who are creating them. In addition, they feel that the Mexican government is trying to impose GM crops on the Mexican population with the message that they are safe and good – which people reject. Whilst in Mexico GM appears to be a controversy with no end in sight, in Brazil GM crops have been widely approved since 2005.

How does Mexico compare to Brazil? Brazil probably has the soundest GM regulation of all three countries. It was implemented the same year as Mexico’s. Whilst in Mexico it was a controversy that now cannot be resolved, in Brazil it was done very quietly. Of the three countries studied, Brazil is the one with the most GM crops implemented. It is the country with the second most GM crops in the world after the US. In Brazil the impression is that it was all done in a rushed manner without consultation. This is true for all three countries.

them. Other farmers said they got into GM because they were contaminated by their neighbour. Particularly small to medium farmers are not seeing the benefits of cultivating GM. A lot of farmers in Brazil are thinking of reverting back to non-GM seeds. Not necessarily organic or native, but non-GM. The whole non-GM market is growing really big in Brazil. Economically farmers weren’t cutting it with GM because they had to use more herbicides and pesticides due to weed and insect resistance to agrochemicals.

How do they view farming in Brazil and how did they first get introduced to GM seeds? In Brazil they have an entrepreneurial concept of farming. Farming is more of a business than a craft or an activity that feeds you. Some farmers feel that they were rushed into using GM seeds while others were demanding

How have they responded to GM technologies in India? In India 80 per cent of farmers are small scale, but they are completely excluded from the discussion. In fact, small farmers are excluded from the discussion in all three countries. The debate over GM in India is a very science-dominated one. So the people

in the government who are dealing with this are scientists, or scientists who have been commissioned, and the people who are opposing it are scientists as well. The discussions hinge upon science. Does India have the scientific capacity to actually test the biosafety of GM technologies? When it comes to the biosafety of GM rice or the impact on rice biodiversity they don’t feel 100 per cent certain. The biggest debate in India is probably about aubergine because India is its centre of origin. There was discussion about preserving ‘Indian genes’ in aubergine. There is a big issue about nationalism. There is a whole postcolonial discussion based on ‘our genes’, ‘our products’ and ‘our science’ in India regarding GM technology. The impression is that GM regulation in India was done behind closed doors, without consultation, or participation. The truth is that there is a moratorium in place but scientific research

continues. The discussion in India is not so much about whether biotechnology is good or bad, but rather can India produce its own biotechnology and regulate it properly?

In Mexico people have a special relationship with maize, how does the prospect of genetically modifying maize seeds challenge this relationship? The case of maize in Mexico is unique among all the other case studies that we’ve done. There is a particular relationship people have with maize in Mexico and I’m talking here about not only farmers, but the consumers, scientists and politicians. To be a person in Mexico is to eat maize. And if you don’t eat your maize products then you’re not Mexican. The maize for the rural people is the cultivation that makes them and for urban dwellers it’s the food that makes them. Maize is the plant that sustains the life and

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Mexican tortillas made from maize.

Soya research lab in Brazil.

wellbeing of Mexicans. So that’s why for the people of Mexico it is unthinkable for maize to be genetically modified or for indigenous maize varieties to disappear.

What is the main risk that people in Mexico are concerned about regarding GM maize? One of the big arguments gaining momentum in Mexico is that if they introduce GM maize they run into the risk of losing their own native varieties, and they will be lost forever. There will not be a way of recovering them and seed banks are not enough. They see the end of the life of small farmers and the end of rural communities whose livelihoods are based on traditional cultivation.

What other risks are communities in all three countries concerned about? The risk of being left behind in the technological race, which is associated with losing sovereignty and independence. Ministries of environment worry about risk to biodiversity, ministries of agriculture tend not to. Those tend to be the most influential organisations in terms of policymaking in all three countries.

Consumers don’t think about risk. They think about danger. It’s not a balancing of pros and cons here. This is about what’s going to happen and for them what’s going to happen is certainly bad. So there’s fear associated with the implementation of GM. The sense is one of danger rather than risk. In all three countries there is definitely a feeling that if science is to happen it needs to be a national science. An argument by pro-GM scientists is ‘look guys we have to get into this. If we don’t do it then others will do it for us. If it’s going to happen it better be our own rather than something big GM companies sell to us’.

How are effects on biodiversity being considered in any of the three countries? It’s at the centre of the discussions. In Mexico it’s the whole idea of introducing GM maize and losing the maize biodiversity, which is not only about maize, but the whole ecosystem, the role of traditional agriculture and the conservation of those ecosystems, which preserves the biodiversity of the country. In India it’s about the same, instead it’s a little bit more upstream. It’s about if we are developing GM in our labs but we don’t know what it’s going to do to

our biodiversity. If we’re not sure about our scientific capacity to actually prove that it will not destroy biodiversity then we cannot unleash it.

GM lab in Mexico.

Family farm in Mexico.

Farmer tilling cotton field in India.

Planting rice in India.

As far as the aims of the GMFuturos project are concerned, what is an example of what you would ultimately like to achieve? We are aiming to introduce farmers’ voices into the discussion and other collectives that have been completely ignored as stakeholders in this issue, including women. And we have taken the position that everyone is a stakeholder in something that affects everyone’s future. The other original contribution is going beyond the surface of the discussion to find out why people really oppose GM so strongly and vocally. The GM discussion is a discussion about futures. It’s a discussion about the future of the environment, the future livelihoods of rural people, indigenous communities and the children of farmers. It’s also a discussion about the food we will eat in the future. Dr Susana Carro-Ripalda is Project Manager of the interdisciplinary research project GMFuturos (https://www.dur.ac.uk/ihrr/ gmfuturos/). Contact: susana.carro-ripalda@ durham.ac.uk

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SECURITISING SPORT MEGA EVENTS

Brett Cherry introduces research findings on Sport Mega Events from two former IHRR researchers, Dr Francisco Klauser and Dr Richard Giulianotti, revealing that these are far more complex and dynamic than is normally realised. Their work shows the variety of public, government, and commercial interests involved in securing these kinds of events from potential risks such as terrorist attacks or riots. It also highlights the sophisticated level of security both in terms of policing and surveillance. This research was part of the Risk and Security programme based at IHRR.

WHEN IT COMES TO GOVERNING security risks in urban environments, Sport Mega Events are at the top of the list. They are some of the largest kinds of public events in the world that demand new forms of security never before seen. The large numbers of people they draw in are often far beyond what many cities deal with on a regular basis. Massive sport events such as the FIFA World Cup, Super Bowl, and the Olympic Games create new spaces that are both highly controlled and surveyed by government and private authorities. Policing them is no longer confined to physical force, but includes high-tech forms of surveillance and new techniques for ‘crowd control’.

Security at Sport Mega Events radically transforms urban areas not only to accommodate the event itself, but to prevent or mitigate potential risks that may disrupt it, from terrorism to hooliganism. These events also involve complex social as well as built infrastructures, involving issues of class, state power, and neo-liberal privatisation that transform sport into a monumental commercial enterprise. These social, political, and technological forces all interact together in a number of complex ways in the course of such events. Sport Mega Events are extremely costly, but also highly profitable. The budget for the 2012 London Olympics was £9.3 billion that includes an extra £271 million to boost security. The introduction of thousands of security personnel and implementation of the latest surveillance technology transforms parts of the city into enclaves specifically designed to prevent and mitigate security risks. In a way this sanitises the urban landscape in an attempt to seal off risk entirely and channel spectators through different parts of the city from transport interchanges to event arenas. Security in this sense is about controlling daily life, but in a way that allows the event to continue unimpeded. Also, the host cities tend to be large tourist destinations and having Sport Mega Events encourages economic development to promote their ‘tourist image’. However, in some cases managing security check points and implementing the most

advanced surveillance technologies is not sufficient. The crowd itself must be managed in such a way that it does not cause interference with the event. The use of ‘fan zones’ in the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany is a prime example of this. A fan zone or ‘fanmeile’ is the separation, fencing, and surveillance of extended parts of city centres:

The tightly enclosed fan zones addressed not only the need to regulate public life during the event, but also served temporarily to reconfigure urban space in the interest of visibility and branding for FIFA’s commercial partners. (KLAUSER, F. 2011)

These fan zones are not only in place to make people safer or more secure, but also exist as an extension of commercialism that underlies the event. Those who participate are also promoting the activities of private commercial interests though they may not be aware of doing so. The commercial influence of Sport Mega Events is obvious in many ways. All small and major sporting events tend to have corporate sponsors, not to mention the teams themselves.

How participants are ordered by security is influenced by mass commercialism. Contemporary security governance combines risk with commercial branding. Sport Mega Events are laboratories for testing innovations in security technology, whether it is CCTV surveillance systems with face recognition or methods of crowd control. Expertise is relied upon to develop model solutions that can lead to projected outcomes, but there are problems with challenging predefined security models. Exemplars drive Sport Mega Event security and are perhaps overly relied upon, potentially leading to other risks that may or may not be well defined by the policies implemented. In the case of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the model of permanent security infrastructure, such as surveillance technologies, will be transferred to other future host cities of the Olympics, Rio de Janeiro for example, that is developing a similar plan for the 2016 Olympic Games. One issue with ‘best practice’ solutions for security is that measures adopted for one urban centre may not necessarily be applicable to others. Unfortunately, there appears little room for democracy at FIFA or other Sport Mega Events to bring to light these concerns: Local authorities and stakeholders, having to implement and finance best practice solutions, are increasingly ‘caught’ within /// CONTINUED...

Above: Wembley Stadium.

Below: Olympic Stadium.

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Sport Mega Events are also widely televised, providing large sources of revenue for broadcasting corporations. Importantly, what is seen at the event is not always what is seen on TV, as any unintended interactions between fans and the sport event are normally ignored or censored from view, such as offensive language or other disturbances. In terms of surveillance, football stadiums in particular were used for the piloting of CCTV security systems in the UK before they were widely used across urban spaces from the early 1990s. At large televised football matches the many (audience) watch over the few (football players); in turn police/security view the crowd from CCTV control rooms to track and identify terrorists, hooligans or anyone looking suspicious.

globalised networks of expertise, unable truly to challenge the reproduction of predefined security exemplars. Yet if the autonomy of local parliaments is limited, so is the scope of public debate: ...negotiations leading to the Host City Charter were a priori excluded from democratic scrutiny. (Klauser, F. 2011) In order to host the FIFA World Cup, governments must hand over exclusive rights and spaces to the organisation’s personnel and the corporations attached to them. A new security template is then put in place by FIFA. There is an imperative to generate profit at these kinds of events, which involves private corporate influence. When South Africa hosted FIFA in 2010 it also saw it as an opportunity to redefine itself. South Africa is the first African country ever to hold an international sports event as large as the FIFA World Cup. The World Cup took place in the vicinity of leisure and retail areas originating from gentrification; it was not held in a poorer residential area. Homeless people and unauthorised vendors were removed forcefully, as is the case in

Above: 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

other cities hosting Sport Mega Events. But the levels of security in Cape Town had a variety of effects on a number of different levels. Crime was reported to have dropped during the football tournament, but then rose significantly after the security officers supplied by the World Cup left. There were also novel methods of security management developed through cooperation between the police and armed forces, but not all of the structures developed as a result of the World Cup remained in place. More CCTV cameras were installed in Johannesburg for the World Cup and an additional 100 cameras were put in place afterwards. Durban also installed 200 more cameras after the event. These surveillance initiatives which remained are used for urban security over the long-term with some linked to biometric databases. Thus there are post-security legacies established in countries that host Sport Mega Events like the World Cup, but especially in developing countries in terms of policing and electronic surveillance. In the case of Euro 2008 (UEFA European Football Championship), UEFA

suspended claims of local businesses to spatial ownership, but also denied any public resistance within host cities. This is one of a number of examples that shows how although these events are indeed ‘public’, they are driven by private interests. The implementation of fan zones in Switzerland and Austria was permanently ‘guided’ by UEFA, meaning that host cities were coerced into accepting them. In terms of security policy, it is the technology companies themselves who are playing a greater role in governing Sport Mega Events. Private security companies not only implement surveillance technologies, but supply the personnel as well. If they continue to define security governance in terms of establishing ‘best practice’ how, if at all, will any input be allowed from public stakeholders, particularly local communities, for how security risks are governed in the future? It does not necessarily follow that privatisation equals less democracy, but private companies’ interests can have a tendency to muffle diverging critical viewpoints from outside, preventing any public scrutiny from taking place in a meaningful way.

This model has also been followed by other countries in Europe, such as CCTV police surveillance intelligence used in Italy; this is in a sense an ‘exemplar’ of ‘best practice’ that transfers across national boundaries. Also, these kinds of sport events are far more focused on the ‘middle class’ in terms of accessibility. Stadiums have in a sense priced out the poor from attending football matches. This was to reclaim ‘safe urban spaces for respectable fans’. Instead of football matches being a culturally expressive and in some cases chaotic ‘carnivalesque’ event that dates back to the Middle Ages,

they are now largely controlled, commercialised events. English Premier League stadiums are not only for football, but like other large public areas such as airports, have been transformed into shopping malls and high-profile conference suites that are part of the backdrop of luxury hotels, health clubs, bars, etc. The branding rights for the stadium are then sold to the highest bidder, which has become a norm in that many former public arenas are now labelled with consumer brands. This sets the tone for the way Sport Mega Events and other small or large public events are managed, not merely in terms of public safety, but in the interests of private business. Terrorist attacks have also left a lasting impression upon large urban centres where Sport Mega Events are held. Since 9/11 and especially since the 7/7 bombings, which occurred a mere 20 hours after the International Olympic Committee made London a future host of the Olympics, the threat of international terrorism has been imprinted on the British capital. This has set the stage for how security exemplars will be used today in the UK and other parts of the world. If numerous economic interests are fundamental to security governance in ensuring public safety at Sport Mega Events, then further research could understand how these security models are currently being developed and disseminated.

/// KEY MESSAGES FOR POLICY - Sport Mega Events are laboratories for testing innovations in security technology which leads to security models that become standard practice. - Certain Sport Mega Events are made into security exemplars which are transferred to other cities that host them, although they may not necessarily be applicable to a country’s needs. - There are post-security legacies established in countries that host Sport Mega Events, but possibly even more so in developing countries in terms of policing and electronic surveillance. - While Sport Mega Events are large public events they are driven mainly by private interests which work to prevent public scrutiny of the security measures implemented.

/// REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING: Coaffee J., Fussey P. & Moore C. (2011) Laminated Security for London 2012: Enhancing Security Infrastructures to Defend Mega Sporting Events. Urban Studies, 48, p. 3311. Cornelissen S. (2011) Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting: Global Processes and Ramifications during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Urban Studies, 48, p. 3221. Giulianotti R. (2011) Sport Mega Events, Urban Football Carnivals and Securitised Commodification: The Case of the English Premier League. Urban Studies, 48, p. 3293. Klauser F. (2011) The Exemplification of ‘Fan Zones’: Mediating Mechanisms in the Reproduction of Best Practices for Security and Branding at Euro 2008. Urban Studies, 48, p. 3203. Risk, surveillance and power. IHRR Blog http://ihrrblog.org/2010/12/08/risksurveillance-and-power/

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Managing environmental risks from Britain’s mining legacy Steven Kershaw explains the risks left by coal mining in Britain and how they can be managed

A ‘crown hole’ which opened by the side of a highway.

A shaft that was used for pumping water in order to control water levels in the mines.

CENTURIES OF MINING IN BRITAIN has left a legacy of abandoned underground mines that continues to represent a risk to public safety and environmental contamination that will exist for many centuries to come. The Coal Authority, founded in 1994 to look after the legacy of the coal industry, owns the estate of coal seams and mines within Britain. In 2014 it will celebrate its 20th anniversary of addressing these risks on behalf of the nation. Its principal roles are the control and treatment of mine waters, treating the effects of subsidence and providing mining information to the public, as well as licensing the mining of coal.

RISKS TO THE PUBLIC A principal risk to the public is the ground collapsing above abandoned mine workings. A thousand such incidents per year are reported to the Coal Authority, approximately half of which are mining related. There is a 24/7 hazard line where the public can phone in to report mining hazards and there are regional staff who can respond as soon as possible after notification. The collapses are largely associated with old shallow workings at depths of less than 30 metres below the surface and mine entries, especially shafts, where collapses occur into voids. These failures can cause damage ranging from something that might represent a trip hazard to something that might swallow buildings or people. Most typically, the damage arising from shallow workings manifests itself as a crown hole, where the collapse of the mine roof into a void migrates upwards until it reaches the surface. After filling any voids, shafts are typically fitted with a reinforced concrete cap to prevent any further collapses. The geographical scale of the areas potentially at risk is large. Abandoned coal mine workings in Britain cover thousands of square kilometres with a significant percentage of these being at shallow depth. The shallowest workings tend to be those that were mined first and are therefore usually the oldest.

But abandonment plans have only had to be legally submitted to the HM Inspectorate of Mines since 1872, so there are many old workings, abandoned before that date, where no documentary evidence exists.

INSPECTING MINE RISKS There are 170,000 recorded mine entries within the coalfields. There is probably a similar number of shafts which were never recorded or archived and whose positions remain unknown. These mined areas are often close to urban centres which grew on the coalfields during the industrial revolution and afterwards. Records show that there are over 58,000 recorded mineshafts in urban areas. This close relationship between potential mining hazards and the areas where people live creates particular problems for public safety. The large scale of the problem and the fact that collapses are very hard to predict, means that expensive proactive remediation of shallow mine workings and shafts is not carried out unless there is a clearly identified reason to do so. Typically, remediation will occur if developers wish to build over land that might have instabilities. This will usually involve filling workings with grout (fly ash, cement, and water) and building concrete caps over the shafts. Known shafts represent discrete points where failure could occur and therefore represent a clear identifiable risk to the public. In 2008 the Coal Authority began a programme of inspecting all the locations of recorded shafts, in order to identify whether there were any particular risks that needed to be addressed. At present 85,000 mineshafts have been visited and between 1–3 per cent of these shafts have been found to require treatment; 151,000 shafts are the responsibility of the Coal Authority which has records of 170,000 shafts in total for the UK. Gas escapes from abandoned mines to the surface represent a small, but significant risk to the public and have resulted in fatalities over the years. The principal risks are from explosions

Above: A major cap under construction below ground level. Concrete is being poured into shuttering holding the reinforcing steel. Below: Two bridges constructed over two mineshafts in order to stabilise them by drilling and grouting. The bridges were required because of thick superficial deposits over the shafts. One shaft created a large sinkhole requiring homes to be demolished.

INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | PERSPECTIVES

THE MAIN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF ABANDONED COAL MINES ARISES FROM THE ISSUE OF MINE WATER.

due to the escape of methane and suffocation due to the emission of low oxygen/high carbon dioxide mixtures. Both of these risks are greatly increased where gas is released into buildings and other confined spaces. To address these risks, vents have been installed into workings known to be at risk of containing gas at pressure, and these are regularly monitored for any changes in gas composition. In addition, two active pumping schemes have been installed in the North East to keep the workings at sub-atmospheric pressure to protect properties at risk. There is also a specialised response to potential gas-related hazards through the 24/7 hazard line.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS The main environmental impact of abandoned coal mines arises from the issue of mine water. These mine waters are typically laden with soluble iron sulphate which on contact with oxygen at the surface precipitates iron ochre. The ochre will turn water bodies a very distinctive red/orange colour and can kill off flora and fauna in those streams and ponds. Under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), countries have an obligation to bring the quality of their water bodies to a ‘good’ status and the Coal Authority works with the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and National Resources Wales to address a list of sites that require treatment to conform with the WFD. To this end it has designed and built over 60 mine water treatment schemes in England, Scotland and Wales. The great majority of these

schemes are systems to collect the ochre and reduce the effluent to acceptable levels (1mg/L iron) before being released into streams, rivers, and the sea. The significant active treatment scheme in Britain is the plant at Dawdon in the north east of England which treats water high in iron and salt, then discharges the treated water into the North Sea. The Dawdon plant is used to treat water that is pumped from mine workings below an aquifer serving the north east region with drinking water. Pumping is required to prevent the iron entering the aquifer and potentially causing iron rich waters to enter the public water supply. These actions are contributing to making significant progress towards the UK’s compliance with the WFD, and significantly improving the environment in coalfield areas of Britain.

REMEDIATING MINE WATERS Waters from abandoned metal mines can contain dangerous levels of toxic metals. They typically do not contain high levels of iron and therefore often appear clean and even drinkable. But unlike water from coal mines there is no single body with responsibility for treating these waters. As a result, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is funding the Coal Authority to look at the feasibility of treating metal mine waters, and building schemes to control contamination from the many metal mines around the country. Two such schemes have already been constructed – one an ironstone mine water issue at Saltburn in Cleveland and the other a zinc and lead mine water issue in the Lake District.

Research and development projects are under way to reduce the risks from mine collapses and the environmental impacts of mine waters. These include using alternative materials for repairing ground collapses, understanding ground failure mechanisms, and using remote sensing methods for inspecting mine entries. Studies are also being conducted into how to build mine water treatment schemes where ground for construction is limited, and new methods of treating metal mine waters. Assessing risk to the public and the Coal Authority’s liabilities are informed by the large body of mining information that is held by the Coal Authority. Coal mine abandonment plans have both been digitised and stored in the Coal Authority’s GIS system. As well as being the source of mining reports, which the Coal Authority produces for house buyers, these records form the principal information base of the Coal Authority and are used for assessing liability and areas of particular risk. Importantly, these records are vital for the role of the Coal Authority as a statutory consultee for local authority planning applications. They enable the Coal Authority to identify risks to development from mining so that such risks can be properly assessed. Key plans identifying the 15 per cent of coal-mined areas that are at highest risk from mine entries and shallow mining, have been provided to all relevant local authority planning departments to assist in determining where past coal mining is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Steven Kershaw is Head of Research and Development for the Coal Authority. Contact: StevenKershaw@coal.gov.uk

Above: Morlais mine water treatment scheme in Wales with two settling lagoons. Ochre can clearly be seen in the lagoon to the right. Below: This polluted stream discharged into the sea via a beach used by holidaymakers.

INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | PERSPECTIVES

Reputational risk in the UK financial sector with Professor Ranald Michie London Stock Exchange.

Canary Wharf, London.

Reputation management is imperative to success for business professionals and in banking it is no different. Banks need a favourable reputation to build trust with customers in order to encourage them to deposit their money, take out mortgages or business loans, and purchase financial products. Like any other profession, bankers must manage their activities appropriately to avoid reputational risk. The image of bankers has been damaged since the banking crisis of 2007–08, although the financial sector in the UK had held a respectable reputation with the public in the past. During the peak of the banking crisis, bankers in Britain were at worst viewed as criminals who toppled the global financial system due to selfidolatry, ignorance, and greed. When engaging in certain kinds of behaviours, bankers risk damaging not only their personal reputation, but that of the entire financial sector. If people lose trust in banks and other financial companies due to scandals and crises, then it may have further knock-on effects on the financial economy. Once bankers’ reputation has been stained by crisis, it

may not be so easy to wash clean. Financial historian Professor Ranald Michie says that British bankers in the late 19th century had a respectable profession, but today are viewed as ‘bogeymen’ who are irrationally exuberant and morally hazardous. In the past, British bankers were able to mitigate reputational risk essentially by avoiding crisis. According to Michie, British banks did not always take the risks they do today and built a foundation of trust with the public and government. This has also to do with the fact that the UK financial system was relatively stable with the exception of crises in 1866 and 2008. Their reputational risk overall was low for many years. The British experience until the recent past reflects a banking system that was allowed to evolve relatively free of legislation intervention and proved to be highly resilient as a result. Financial services in the UK, particularly in London, rank amongst some of the

Since the start of the financial crisis the image of bankers could improve.

largest in the world. As a global financial centre London is nearly equal to that of New York. Therefore, maintaining a reputation that is free from financial crime or scandal is imperative to competing globally.

In the early 19th century another group of financial intermediaries known as ‘company promoters’ was seen in a light similar to bankers today as told in Max Pemberton’s The Impregnable City published in 1890:

The UK has much to lose from any reputational damage caused by financial crime, especially if financial crime undermines trust in the financial system, or its reputation recruitment is damaged and governments introduce laws that are detrimental to financial services.

The City of London remained a byword for greed, corruption, and dishonourable conduct whenever the subject of company promotion surfaced, with the only fitting punishment for those who made their living by such means being a sudden and violent death.

In some cases it could be argued that this damage has already been felt in terms of potential future employees of the financial industry. In a YouGov survey of 1,000 students commissioned by Lloyd’s Bank, 70 per cent of them believed that British bankers were driven by greed. Only 2 per cent of them were interested in pursuing a career in banking. A similar case in the US was found for Harvard graduates entering the financial sector which dropped from 23 per cent in 2008 to 9 per cent in 2012, but this is more likely because of lack of job opportunities.

Despite that reputation London continued to attract highly talented bankers, brokers and other financial experts from throughout the world. It also recruited and trained a large and skilled domestic labour force.

Michie argues that the biggest risk actually comes from government intervention that attempts to transform the reputation of banks, but in doing so could expose them to higher risks. This includes curbing bonuses which could drive business away from London and the introduction of a transaction tax on financial products such as securities, derivatives, and currency exchanges. While this tax has encountered resistance from the UK government, it is of considerable interest to other EU countries. If left to government, attempts to improve that reputation could actually damage the UK financial services sector because of the consequences of any legislation and taxes. What is required is the individual and collective effort of all those in the UK financial services sector to restore the reputation it once enjoyed. That was done in the 19th century through the actions of bodies such as the London Stock Exchange and the Bank of England. London bankers would do best to improve their reputation by retaining

the trust of both the government and the public while remaining competitive globally. According to Michie, this was achieved in the past not through legislation, ‘but the actions of bodies like the London Stock Exchange, the Bank of England and the Institute of Bankers and these need to be revived and reinforced in the future’. We are again at a tipping point where such a response to build reputation is required. Without such a response the risk is that continental European governments will take advantage of the reputational damage inflicted on the British financial sector over the last 5 years, to introduce measures that will drive business away from the City of London and towards themselves, even at the cost of Europe as a whole losing out through the migration of financial activity to less regulated jurisdictions elsewhere in the world. Ranald Michie is a professor in the Department of History at Durham University. He is a project leader on the Tipping Points project, one of the themes of which is crisis in the UK financial sector. Contact: r.c.michie@durham.ac.uk

www.durham.ac.uk/ihrr @_IHRR

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