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Understanding Environmental Knowledge Controversies: the Case for Flood Risk Management, 2007-2010

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UK Data Archive Study Number 6620 Understanding Environmental Knowledge Controversies: the Case for Flood Risk Management, 2007-2010 USER GUIDE Oxford University Centre for the Environment RELU Project Office South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, United Kingdom Interview Consent Form I agree to be interviewed for the purpose of the ‘Understanding Environmental Knowledge Controversies’ project and to the interview being electronically recorded. I understand : that my name will not appear on any tapes or transcripts resulting from the interview. that my name and identity will remain confidential in any publications or presentations referring to this interview. that I will receive a copy of the transcribed interview and of any publications referring to this interview. that I will have the opportunity to comment on and add further information in relation to the transcript of this interview. Signature of interviewee: …………………………. Printed name of interviewee : …………………………………. Date : ……………………………….. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have explained the project and the implications of being interviewed to the interviewee and I believe that the consent is informed and that he/she understand the implications of participation. Name of interviewer : Printed name of interviewer : Date : If you require further information about the research please contact the project office. 1 FINDING THE ACTORS (A NOTE ON METHOD) ACTIONS Actor-Network Theory (ANT) encourages researchers to ‘follow the actors’. Although this exhortation lacks somewhat in specificity many STS researchers have taken it to mean that they should conduct ethnographies of research groups and/or laboratories. This approach has generated many interesting studies illuminating previously overlooked aspects of the actual doing of science. However, it still tends to leave out many relevant aspects. In contrast to the ethnographic close focus on one research community this study of flood modelling in the UK aims to generate material that enable us to understand the circulation of knowledges, practices, people and technology among organisations and across locations. Hence, we need to focus on the network as generative of an environment in which research is conducted, policies conceived and controversies arising. To trace a network of heterogeneous actors is an undertaking that has been made much easier by the existence of the world wide web (www). The web is a virtual space in which physical actors make traces. These traces can be easily located and followed back from the virtual to the physical. Our cartography of the UK flood risk modelling environment starts with mapping actors through their virtual relationships. We started with the Defra (the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs1) benchmarking of 1- dimensional hydraulic river modelling software packages commencing in 2002. According to the project report published in 2004 the endeavour was undertaken as a necessary update of a previous benchmarking effort initiated in 1993 by the National Rivers Authority (NRA)2. With time several of the eleven packages benchmarked then had been taken off the market and the remaining had been significantly upgraded, and the Environment Agency had rationalised its software support. Hence, a new benchmarking study serving to ensure ‘that best practice in hydraulic modelling is consistently achieved’ (R&D Technical Summary W5-105/TS) worked with three software packages: ISIS, MIKE 11 and HEC-RAS. An immediate realisation was that the www does not support chronological exploration. Differently from archives of written texts the web does not keep track of time, web pages are added to, changed or removed at will. Many government departments, such as Defra, have chosen to use the web as an archive which, in relation to our purpose, means that the details of the benchmarking project in the form of the final report is accessible. This archival impulse does not extend to the software providers who, as players on the IT- market update both their products and their websites regularly. Hence, doing a study today means that the software packages that were benchmarked by Defra a few years ago have been updated and further developed. 1 http://www.defra.gov.uk/ 2 The NRA was a government agency responsible for managing water resources between 1989 and 1996. According to tiscali.referenc (http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0027296.html, accessed 23/8/2007) it took over the responsibility of ten regional water authorities in England and Wales. It was replaced by the Environment agency. 2 Following up on the three software packages in 2007 we find that ISIS is, according to its webpage presentation ‘a flexible and comprehensive range of tools for designing cost- effective engineering schemes and developing catchment strategies’3.The software package is created and owned by Wallingford Software, a UK based business that creates computer software for the management of water resources4. MIKE 11 is, again according to the web presentation, ‘the most popular river modelling system among professionals dealing with surface water problems in the world’ being ‘a versatile one-dimensional hydrodynamic software package including a full solution of the St. Venant equations’5. It is manufactured by DHI (the Danish Hydrological Institute) a company working internationally, with an office in Church Stretton in the UK6. HEC-RAS, developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers7, is on the web described to be ‘designed to perform one-dimensional hydraulic calculations for a full network of natural and constructed channels’8. In contrast to the other two software packages HEC- RAS is a free download, accessible to everybody. The non-proprietary nature of this programme is a result of US law establishing that any technology developed with federal public funding should be made available to the public free of cost. However, there is no user support available to users outside of the US military. Focusing on the effort to stabilise 1-D hydrodynamic models use in the UK through a web tracing of links leads to a number of consultant businesses. Even before leaving the Defra website we run into Bullen Consultants and Halcrow Group, which both figure on the first page of the project overview, as research contractor and contractor’s project manager, respectively. Bullen Consultants9, a UK based firm with over 500 employees in offices throughout the UK, merged with Faber Maunsell10 within the wider framework of US firm AECOM Technology11 on the 1st of April 2005. Halcrow12 is a UK based international engineering consultant with 6,000 employees in offices worldwide, has 25 offices in the UK. Halcrow Group is part owner of the ISIS model which makes the benchmarking project appear vulnerable to accusations of bias. 3 ‘ISIS Flow/Hydrology’, http://www.wallingfordsoftware.com/products/isis, accessed 27/03/2007. 4 Wallingford Software (presented at http://www.wallingfordsoftware.com/info/profile) located in Oxfordshire is part of the HR Wallingford Group (http://www.hrwallingford-group.co.uk) that provides consultant services worldwide. 5 ‘Water Resources’, http://www.dhigroup.com/Software/WaterResources.aspx, accessed 26/3/2007. 6 The software package, the local offices and information about DHI were descrbed on the website http://www.dhigroup.com/. 7 The USACE Hydrology Engineering Center maintains a website at http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/. 8 ‘Features’, http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-ras/hecras-features.html, accessed 28/3/2007. 9 In the DEFRA report located at the website http://www.bullen.com. 10 http://www.fabermaunsell.com/index.jsp 11 http://www.aecom.com/ 12 http://www.halcrow.com/html/default.htm 3 By looking closer at the websites of the three software packages there are further links to follow. ISIS mentions a number of consultants in relation to projects presented on the website. In 2007 most projects presented engage with the InfoWorks software, but there are some archived older news stories about ISIS. One of them mentions Peter Brett Associates13 a UK based consultant. On their website there is a link to the Association for Consultants in Engineering14 on whose website one can get a list of consultants working with water in the UK. However, trying to use this list to locate further 1-D model users proved impossible because it was not possible to limit the search criteria in a way that generated less than several hundred hits which could not be linked to specific models. This discovery confirms the efficacy of an ANT approach, tracing actors via links that are made explicit in one form or another, rather than trying to construct some type of exhaustive account of a population of actors that could then b sampled in a quantitative social science fashion. After discovering this we moved on to trace more actors via the MIKE 11 website. On its extensive and detailed website DHI presents its entire range of software packages. Although they claim widespread use of MIKE11 all over the world only a few examples of consultants using it are provided. Looking for projects and consultants in the UK we found references to Atkins15 which claims to be the largest engineering consultant and the largest employer of technical staff in the UK. Another consultant mentioned is Hyder Consulting16 just celebrating 150 years in business, now a worldwide operator with 18 offices in the UK and registered on the London Stock Exchange since 2002. A third consultant identified on the MIKE11 website is Mott MacDonald17 a US owned firm with 11,000 staff in 140 countries, listing ‘Water’ as one of their sectors of expertise18. In addition to giving references to users MIKE11 is also explicitly connected to the FEH (Flood Estimation Handbook), another hub in the actor network of flood models in the UK that we will return to below. HEC-RAS, the free for use software, has a very different presentation of use, all within the framework of showing the US Army as a constructive force, aiding the rebuilding of infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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