Research

This report examines how marine and coastal heritage assets can be managed to enhance their ability to deliver natural capital benefits while preserving their historic significance. Through a rapid literature review, stakeholder engagement, and interdisciplinary analysis, the study identifies how marine and coastal heritage assets support ecosystem services, highlighting a range of management approaches to increase co-benefits, challenges and recommendations.

Storm clustering can generate successive coastal hazards, but short records limit assessment. Using a ~500‑year pre‑industrial model for Great Britain, this study shows that apparent clustering varies strongly over 50‑year periods and is likely underestimated, implying greater future risk under climate change and sea‑level rise.

An analysis of trends in the magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall in the UK, for durations 1 to 16 days. A spatial extreme value model is fitted to improve the detection of any signal of non-stationarity, test the explanatory power of climatic covariates and explore the spatial variability of trends. While most individual rain gauges show no significant trend, there is evidence of non-stationarity across the dataset as a whole.

This study offers practical recommendations for the application of different NbS interventions in hydraulic modelling and outlines the corresponding parameter ranges to consider. To demonstrate the real-world utility of these recommendations, a case study of the River Chew catchment (England) is presented, detailing pre- and post-intervention configurations wherein multiple candidate areas are converted to wetland and woodland using a HEC-RAS 2D model.

This study examines how schools in the East and West Midlands have experienced flooding. Findings show wide variation in awareness, emergency procedures and engagement. Most schools had faced flooding or near misses but lacked formal guidance or plans, leading to improvised response. Despite limited funding schools demonstrated adaptive potential. The study offers evidence for headteachers, policymakers and local authorities in strengthening school-based flood resilience.

Risk managers are having to plan and make decisions for an uncertain future. This case study of the application of an adaptation pathway approach at Hurst Spit provides an important example of how to embrace uncertainty in decision-making. The approaches and model developed are transferrable across geographic locations, industries and sectors.