Enhancing UK Flood Resilience: Past Floods, Present Threats, Future Responses

洪水是当今英国最严重的环境威胁。据预测，这一问题在今后几十年内将日益严重。迫切需要找到集体对策来应对这一挑战和其他与气候有关的挑战，这反映在最近的词汇变化中：我们不再谈论危机，而是紧急情况。积极应对洪水威胁需要中央政府和地方当局、环境机构、学术界和公众采取统一行动。未来洪水控制的关键将是现在正在就如何最好地管理英国景观做出的根本决定。在许多方面，人们逐渐意识到，如果这个国家要变得更具洪水抵御能力，景观变化可能必须在概念上激进，在实施上大胆。为了切实可行和可交付的，这是至关重要的，从景观的新配置所产生的积极利益是有效地传达给受变化影响的社区，如果过渡不被抵制和拖延。这个研究网络，由艺术和人文学者领导，汇集了那些在历史和当代环境的利益，与观点提供过去，现在，以及英国景观的未来形态和社会对洪水的反应。该网络的重点是，在第一种情况下，这些景观的决定，需要采取建立更大的洪水恢复能力在英格兰和威尔士。随着时间的推移，该网络将寻求扩大其职权范围，以整个英国和超越。该网络旨在打破学术孤岛，特别是打破艺术和人文科学的鸿沟。至关重要的是，该网络将涉及目前负责在全国建立和提供洪水复原力的机构的代表。它的明确目标是为当前的讨论和辩论做出实质性贡献，这些讨论和辩论围绕着对英国不断上升的洪水威胁的最适当和可交付的反应。特别是它看起来充分利用独特的，很大程度上被忽视的贡献，艺术和人文阅读英国景观的长期发展和社会对洪水的反应，可能会在未来创造更多的防洪社区和景观。只有通过跨学科处理才能充分解决的三个问题导致了该研究网络的创建并指导其议程。首先，我们是否可以或应该继续依赖硬工程防御作为减轻洪水的主要方法，或者我们是否应该转向更软的自然洪水管理策略？第二，可以从社区过去应对洪水的方式以及他们为减轻洪水灾害而采取的土地管理做法中吸取哪些经验教训：这些做法是否可以为未来提供模板？第三，在认识到景观变化将影响人们与熟悉的景观的现有关系和欣赏时，如何，在哪里，以及以何种方式最好和最敏感地实现这种所需的转变？该网络直接响应那些负责洪水管理和提供这些必要的景观变化，他们希望从学院，以填补他们已经确定的证据差距，他们希望，以加强他们目前的做法。它将建立一个新的研究议程，其中艺术和人文研究将在未来证明英国景观免受洪水威胁方面发挥核心作用。为网络提供一个研究重点，有可能产生更直接的影响，该网络将与环境局密切合作，因为他们制定和提供他们的计划，为未来的可持续管理的低洼，洪水保护景观的Axholme岛在北新罕布什尔州和林肯郡。

Flooding represents the most serious environmental threat to the UK today. It is a problem predicted to increase over the next few decades. The urgency with which collective responses must be found to this, and other climate-related challenges, is reflected in the recent shift in vocabulary: we no longer talk of a crisis but an emergency. Positive responses to the flood threat will require a unity of action between central government and local authorities, environmental agencies, academics, and the public. Key to future flood control will be the fundamental decisions now being taken over how the UK landscape can be best managed. Within many quarters there is a dawning realisation that if the country is to become more flood resilient, landscape change may have to be radical in conception and bold in undertaking. To be both practicable and deliverable, it is essential that the positive benefits deriving from new configurations of the landscape are communicated effectively to communities affected by change if the transition is not to be resisted and delayed.This Research Network, led by scholars from the Arts and Humanities, draws together those with interests in the historic and contemporary environment, with perspectives to offer on the past, present, and future shape of the British landscape and societal responses to flooding. This Network focuses, in the first instance, on those landscape decisions that are required to be taken to build greater flood resilience in England and Wales. Over time, the Network will look to broaden its remit to the whole of the UK and beyond. The Network aims to break down academic silos, and in particular collapse the Arts and Humanities-Science divide. Crucially, the Network will involve representatives from those agencies currently charged with building and delivering flood resilience across the country. It has the express ambition of contributing substantively to current discourse and debates surrounding the most appropriate and deliverable responses to the rising flood threat in the UK. In particular it looks to fully exploit the unique, and largely overlooked, contribution that Arts and Humanities readings of the long-term development of the British landscape and societal responses to flooding, might make in creating more flood resistant communities and landscapes into the future. Three questions, which can only be fully addressed through interdisciplinary treatment, have led to the creation of this Research Network and guide its agenda. First, can we or should we continue to rely on on hard engineered defences as the principal method for mitigating floods or should we be moving towards softer natural flood management strategies? Second, what lessons can be drawn from the ways in which communities have responded to flooding in the past and the land management practices they adopted to mitigate against floods: might these provide templates for the future? Thirdly, in recognising that landscape change will impact people's existing relationship with, and appreciation of, familiar landscapes, how, where, and in what ways might this required transformation be best and most sensitively achieved? The Network responds directly to those responsible for flood management and delivering these necessary landscape changes and what they desire from the academy in order to fill evidential gaps they have identified and which they want in order to enhance their current practice. It will establish a new research agenda in which Arts and Humanities research will play a central role in future proofing the UK landscape against the rising threat of flooding. Providing a research focus for the Network with the potential to deliver more immediate impact, the Network will work closely with the Environment Agency as they develop and deliver their plans for the future sustainable management of the low-lying, flood-protected landscape of Isle of Axholme in north Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.