Extreme Weather Adaptation Hub
Next Event - details to be confirmed
Previous Event - Extreme Weather Workshop and Forum, June 2023
The event aimed to ascertain the challenges facing a range of organisations from extreme weather impacts and climate change. The objections of the event were to promote collaboration, facilitate discussion, provide an overview of current research activities, and determine what skills gaps there may be and how they could be addressed. In total 74 people signed up for the event and 62 attended. There were attendees from 34 organisations (e.g. water companies, consultancies, the insurance and finance industry, and local authorities), with guest speakers from Network Rail, the Met Office, JBA Risk Management and Loughborough University.
The event comprised keynote presentations from Professor Hayley Fowler on “Changing Weather Hazards and Risks in a Warming Climate”, Paul Davies from the Met Office on “Extreme Weather”, Dr Brian Haddock from Network Rail on “Impacts of adverse and extreme weather to the UK Rail Network”, Dr Hannah Bloomfield on “Why the insurance sector care about extreme weather”, and Professor Richard Dawson from the Committee on Climate Change on “Infrastructure and Adaptation Policy”. There were also short talks highlighting current research in industry and academia relevant to extreme weather risks from several highly knowledgeable speakers.
An interactive session sought inputs from participants on the grand challenges relating to climate change and extreme weather adaptation and resilience. The challenges of a need for cultural change within organisations and access to data were two topics that attracted most attention. Suggestions including creating a national climate change centre akin to the Treasury to help support industry with adaptation. Points were raised about the need to engage with communities/industry/politicians to ensure buy-in and effective implementation of adaptation measures.
Presentations from the event are available below:
Presentation - Hannah Bloomfield