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

洪水是当今英国面临的最严重的环境威胁。这是一个预计将在未来几十年内加剧的问题。必须找到集体应对措施的紧迫性，以及其他与气候相关的挑战，都反映在最近词汇的转变上：我们不再谈论危机，而是紧急情况。对洪水威胁的积极回应将需要中央政府和地方当局、环境机构、学者和公众之间的行动统一。未来防洪的关键将是目前正在做出的关于如何最好地管理英国景观的根本决定。在许多方面，人们开始意识到，如果这个国家要变得更具抗洪能力，地貌变化可能必须在概念上激进，在行动上大胆。为了可行和可交付，如果不抵制和推迟过渡，从新的景观配置中获得的积极利益被有效地传达给受变化影响的社区是至关重要的。这个由艺术和人文学科的学者领导的研究网络将那些对历史和当代环境感兴趣的人聚集在一起，提供关于英国景观的过去、现在和未来的形态以及社会对洪水的反应的观点。该网络首先集中于在英格兰和威尔士建立更强的抗洪能力所需做出的景观决策。随着时间的推移，该网络将寻求将其覆盖范围扩大到整个英国乃至更远的地方。该网络旨在打破学术孤岛，特别是打破艺术和人文-科学之间的鸿沟。至关重要的是，该网络将包括目前负责在全国建立和提供抗洪能力的机构的代表。它明确的雄心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应对英国不断上升的洪水威胁的最适当和最可行的应对措施。特别是，它希望充分利用艺术与人文读物对英国景观的长期发展和社会对洪水的反应的独特贡献，这些贡献可能会在未来创造更多抗洪社区和景观。只有通过跨学科处理才能充分解决的三个问题导致了这个研究网络的建立，并指导了它的议程。首先，我们是否可以或应该继续依赖硬工程防御作为缓解洪水的主要方法，或者我们是否应该转向更温和的自然洪水管理战略？其次，我们可以从社区过去应对洪灾的方式以及他们为缓解洪灾而采取的土地管理做法中吸取什么教训：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景观的现有关系和欣赏时，如何、在哪里、以什么方式实现这一所需的转变才能最好、最敏感地实现？该网络直接回应那些负责洪水管理和提供这些必要的地貌变化的人，以及他们希望从学院获得什么，以填补他们已经确定的证据空白，并希望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保护英国景观免受日益严重的洪水威胁方面发挥核心作用。为该网络提供一个有可能产生更直接影响的研究重点，该网络将与环境局密切合作，为诺丁汉郡北部和林肯郡阿克斯霍尔姆岛低洼、受洪水保护的地势未来的可持续管理制定和交付计划。

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.