Professional summary

Research Interests

  • Identifying and characteristing droughts
  • Improving drought monitoring and early warning
  • Collation and use of drought impact data to improve drought monitoring and impact forecasting
  • Hydrological situation monitoring and reporting
  • Visualisation of monitoring information to improve communication

Lucy is specialised in drought research in the UK and internationally. She works to advance hydrological drought characterisation and improve the implementation of drought indicators for monitoring and early warning applications on projects in the UK, Europe, China, India and Thailand. Lucy led the development of guidance for countries to monitor their progress towards UNCCD Strategic Objective 3, tracking trends in drought hazard, exposure and vulnerability over time with the aim of enhancing the resilience of vulnerable populations and ecosystems to drought. In the DrIVER project, she explored the use standardised drought indices in the UK and contributed to research linking indices to impacts in order to ground truth the indices used for monitoring and early warning. Within the Historic Droughts project she used identified, characterised and ranked drought events for 108 catchments across the UK between 1891 and 2015. Using these data she developed the ‘UK Hydrological Drought Explorer’ an interactive web app using the R programming language to enable users to explore the analysis in more detail. She also leads the National Hydrological Monitoring Programme, authoring the monthly Hydrological Summary for the UK and occasional reporting of extreme events for an audience that encompasses the government, media and general public. Within ENDOWS, she contributed to the development of the UK Water Resources Portal, including engagement and co-design with a range of stakeholders. She is working with the World Meteorological Organization on the implementation and coordination of the Hydrological Status and Outlook (HydroSOS) initiative. Lucy’s work aims to better inform decision-makers, improve resilience and reduce vulnerability to hydrological hazards.

Brief CV

2017-present: Hydrological Analyst, UKCEH

2014-2017: Drought Monitoring and Water Resources Research Associate, CEH

2012-2014: Technical Analyst, JBA Consulting

Before joining UKCEH, Lucy worked at JBA Consulting for 18 months in GIS and hydrology teams mainly working on flood mapping and culvert blockage risk mapping as well as on the Global Flood Map for JBA Risk Management.

Qualifications

  • BSc (Hons) Geography, Upper Second Class, University of Southampton, 2011
  • MSc River Environmental Management, Distinction, University of Birmingham, 2012

Panels, committees and memberships

  • UKCEH Representative British Hydrological Society (2022-present)
  • Honorary Secretary, British Hydrological Society (2020-2022)
  • WMO Expert Team on Drought (2022-present)
  • WMO Expert Network (2020-present)
  • Young Member Representative, British Hydrological Society (2017-2020)
  • Member, Euro-FRIEND Low Flows and Droughts Group (2015-present)
  • Member, British Hydrological Society (2014-present)

Work-related training

  • 2014 Drought R&SPI Summer School, Syros, Greece
  • 2014 Introduction to R, Mango Solutions, Wallingford, UK
  • 2014 Introduction to Hydrometry, Hydro-Logic, Wallingford, UK
  • 2014 Catchment Science Summer School, Aberdeen, UK
  • 2014 Environmental Statistics, University of Glasgow, UK
  • 2014 Communicating your Science with Confidence, CEH & Boffin Media, Wallingford, UK
  • 2015 Advanced R, Mango Solutions, London, UK
  • 2015 Introduction to Meteorology & Climate, Met Office, Wallingford, UK
  • 2016 Python for Data Science, Enthought, London, UK
  • 2018 Prediction in Ungauged Basins Summer School, Vienna, Austria
  • 2018 Introduction to Statistics, Lancaster, UK
  • 2019 Stakeholder Engagement, Dialogue Matters, Lancaster, UK
  • 2020 Train the Trainer, UKCEH, Wallingford, UK
  • 2020 Visual Story Telling, infohackit, online

Publications