About Drought Handbook: Outputs & Impacts

ENDOWS
What difference has it made?
Many applied research projects produce fantastic work of great value, but
the best research in the world is worth nothing if it is not put to use
to address the challenges that society face – they often fail when the
question posed – usually at the conclusion of the work – is ‘So what?’.
Top to bottom:
1. About Drought at IRRIGEX 2019.
2. MaRIUS Water Suppliers Workshop,
Oxford 2018.
3. About Drought Showcase,2018
4. Science Media Centre breifing 2018
From the kick-off in July 2017
ENDOWS Work Stream 7 (WS7) set
out to address the ‘So what?’ challenge,
bringing together members of the
original four projects - DRY, MaRIUS,
IMPETUS and Historic Droughts
- to communicate and share the
knowledge generated by £12m-worth
of UK Drought and Water Scarcity
research, developed into accessible and
meaningful resources to be put into use
during the lifetime of the project as well
as beyond, making both an immediate
and lasting impact.
Thus, when December 2017’s
Hydrological Outlook indicated that
drought was looming, About Drought
was in a strong position to put some
elements into early implementation.
WS7 was also ready to capitalise on
the raised awareness that developed
as summer 2018 approached, not
only among the public sector, water
suppliers, agriculture sector and
industry but among the wider public.
Skilled researchers from humanities and
science worked alongside each other
from the outset, as well as alongside
the people to whom the outputs
would make a difference. In prioritising
the language of drought, About
Drought has been able to facilitate
the communication of the science of
drought.
Relevance and ease of functionality
of decision-support data were built
into DRY, MaRIUS, IMPETUS and
Historic Droughts through co-design
workshops. ENDOWS funding enabled
that to become fully developed into a
series of data visualisations, portals,
tools, searchable archives, written
material and face-to-face events,
supporting decision-makers at every
level and across sectors. These included
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the Environment Agency (EA), Yorkshire
Water, Anglian Water and South West
Water, which were able to access the
UK Water Resources Portal (https://eip.
ceh.ac.uk/droughts).
A ‘brand’ new approach
With expert insight from members
of WS7 from the University of
the West of England’s Science
Communications Unit; capitalising
on the Institute for Environmental
Analytics’ success in speeding
up the progress of environmental
data research from academia to
business; the Environmental Change
Institute’s well-established routes
into policy-makers and the Centre
for Ecology & Hydrology’s high
profile in environmental research, WS7
prioritised:
About Drought branding - strong,
visual, recognisable and clearly labelled
branding that ‘does what it says on
the tin’. No convoluted acronym, just
a clear, strong label, with the strapline
‘Maximising UK research on drought
and water scarcity’: readily identifiable
and widely accessible. It is applied to
our key platforms, printed and online
content making our suite of outputs
eye-catching and easily identifiable,
from pull-up banners to briefing papers.
WS7 has designed branded templates
for printed content from posters to
postcards and an online e-magazine
platform for paper-free delegate
programmes.
www.AboutDrought.info - a onestop
source for reliable information
on drought and water scarcity. It
features the staple elements such
as subscriptions to the quarterly
newsletters produced by WS7 for