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
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2023 - present: Project Lead; IndicatoRs to Impacts for drought Surveillance (IRIS); NERC.
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2023 - present: Lead and Researcher; National Monitoring Programme (NHMP); UK-SCAPE, NERC National Capability.
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2022 - present: Project and Task Lead (Global Adaptation), International Science for Net Zero Plus; NERC National Capability.
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2022 - present: Work Package Co-Lead (Knowledge Integration and Exchange); Researcher, Climate change in the Arctic-North Atlantic Region and Impacts on the UK (CANARI); NERC National Capability.
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2022 - present: Coordination team and Technical team member, HydroSOS Implementation Phase; World Meteorological Organization.
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2021-present: Work package lead (Analysis) & Researcher, Reference Observatory of Basins for INternational hydrological climate change detection (ROBIN); NERC.
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2021-2022: Task lead (Global drought risk), Land Air Water International Science (LAWIS); NERC.
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2020-2021: Project lead, Good Practice Guidance for National Reporting on UNCCD Strategic Objective 3; UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
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2020-2021: Researcher, Reviewing Approaches for communicating Drought status And Risk (RADAR); Defra.
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2020-2021: Module lead (Introduction to Droughts), Ayeyarwady Integrated River Basin Management Project (AIRBM): Myanmar WMO Hydrology Training Programme; World Meteorological Organization.
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2018 - 2022: Researcher, Strengthening Thailand’s Agricultural Drought Resilience (STAR); Newton Fund/NERC.
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2018 - 2020: Work Package Co-Lead (WP2b Hydrological Status Monitoring), HydroSOS Pilot Phase; World Meteorological Organization.
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2017 - 2021: Researcher, Sustainable Use of Natural Resources to Improve Human Health and Support Economic Development (SUNRISE); NERC.
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2017-2019: Researcher, Engaging diverse stakeholders and publics with outputs from the Drought and Water Scarcity Programme (ENDOWS); NERC.
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2015 - present: Author of Hydrological Summary for the UK, National Hydrological Monitoring Programme (NHMP); UK-SCAPE, NERC National Capability.
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2014 - 2023: Researcher, National Monitoring Programme (NHMP); UK-SCAPE, NERC National Capability.
2014-2017: Drought Monitoring and Water Resources Research Associate, CEH
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2015-2017: Researcher, End-to-end Demonstrator for improved decision making in the water sector in Europe (EDgE); ECMWF/Copernicus C3S.
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2014-2019: Researcher, Analysis of Historic Droughts and Water Scarcity; NERC.
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2014 - 2017: Researcher, Drought Impacts: Vulnerability thresholds in monitoring and Early-warning Research (DrIVER); Belmont Forum/NERC.
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2014-2019: Regional Representative for Yorkshire and the North East of England, National River Flow Archive (NRFA), UK-SCAPE, NERC National Capability.
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
- 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)
- 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)
Selected publications
- Dynamic high resolution hydrological status monitoring in real-time: the UK Water Resources Portal
- Historic hydrological droughts 1891–2015: systematic characterisation for a diverse set of catchments across the UK
- From meteorological to hydrological drought using standardised indicators
- The 2018/2019 drought in the UK: a hydrological appraisal
- The winter 2015/2016 floods in the UK: a hydrological appraisal
- Regional differences in spatiotemporal drought characteristics in Great Britain
- Enhancing drought monitoring and early warning for the UK through stakeholder co-enquiries
- Impacts of European drought events:
insights from an international database of
text-based reports
- The 2019/2020 floods in the UK: a hydrological appraisal
Web tools and apps
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
- 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