Environment Agency: Demonstrating how stress testing can be used to understand catchment resilience - an exploration of catchment drought management actions in present day and future climate.

Tender description

The Environment Agency wants to ensure that catchments in England are resilient to a range of pressures, both now and in the future. It is currently exploring how it could define and use resilience in a practical way. Stress testing is a way to find out how a system performs when it is subjected to pressures beyond those normally experienced. The results of a stress test are useful in helping system managers understand the risks they face and whether they need to intervene to make the system perform differently. It has therefore been proposed that stress testing may help to elucidate resilience in systems. The Environment Agency wishes to explore this using real world example catchments. The Environment Agency drought planning process includes the implementation of a range of actions, varying from enhanced monitoring to restrictions on spray irrigation (sometimes referred to as Section 57 restrictions relating to the relevant section of the Water Resources Act 1991) and water company drought permits and orders. Past research has looked at how water company supply systems and drought plans perform on their own but there has been no equivalent assessment that includes EA drought plan actions. Building on the previous research with the water companies, this proposal aims to use stress testing methods to test the performance of catchment drought management actions at mitigating the impacts of drought both in present day and under climate change and what discoveries and implications there are for the resilience of catchments.