Research Funding cycle: 2016-21

The aim of this study was to evaluate the Scottish Government funded Community Resilience Development Officer post at Education Scotland. The evaluation took place to inform the Scottish Government in terms of planning, and funding for, future posts of this kind. The purpose of the post is to help embed resilience thinking and online resources within the Curriculum for Excellence, i.e.to ensure resilience thinking reaches schools and children.

The Coastal Change Assessment creates a shared evidence base to support more sustainable coastal and terrestrial planning decisions in the light of a changing climate. For the first time, all 21000 km of the Scottish shoreline have been analysed to a level of detail never achieved before.

Onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS), the majority of which are septic tanks, are a contributing factor to phosphorus and faecal microbial loads. OWTS contribute to waterbodies failing to meet Water Framework Directive (WFD) objectives and as such, measures to improve the quality of OWTS discharges are required. Literature has been reviewed for a range of measures designed to reduce phosphorus and pathogen concentrations in effluent from OWTS. A feasibility assessment focussed on their application, effectiveness, efficiency, cost and ease of adaptation.

This project set out to explore the possibility of producing a set of four risk maps that could be used to determine the risk of diffuse pollution occurring within Scottish agricultural catchments. The key soil-based factors likely to affect water quality were deemed to be:

This project aimed to work with four rural communities to explore engagement around private water supplies (PWS). Approximately 3.4% of the Scottish population uses around 20,000 PWS, predominantly in rural areas (DWQR, 2016).  These drinking
water sources may not provide resilience in dry periods.  In addition, the quality of PWS is highly variable (DWQR, 2016), posing associated health risks. Failures are often due to poor or unmaintained treatment systems and sources with variable quality
(especially during wet weather events).

This report covers control measures for 13 high or moderate impact, and one ‘alarm’ species on the UKTAG list that were not covered by the Aldridge report for Natural England. It draws information from published and unpublished literature, listed best  practices, technical reports, unpublished reports, project websites and expert knowledge. For each species, a report was written to present essential background information about the ecology and biology of the species. This is followed by a list of  invasion pathways and known techniques to limit further spread.

The aim of this work was to carry out a mass balance of energy, nutrients and other potential resources at a range of scales (single house, small community and large urban scale). The focus of the study was on waste water treatment and resource  recovery. The study considered whether a closed loop cycle for water and energy was possible in these situations. In doing so, the project team identified technologies, systems and approaches that may need to be adopted to make this possible.

Are radon concentrations in drinking water higher in the high-risk area, where the underlying geology is likely to deliver high radon concentrations in groundwater and indoor-air, than elsewhere in Scotland? What should the minimum allowable radon concentration (parametric value) and action level for remedial action be in drinking water to protect public health from exposure to radon?

The European Commission published a new Directive under the Euratom Treaty (Council Directive 2013/51/Euratom, hereafter reported as the Directive) laying down requirements for the concentrations of radioactive substances in water intended for human consumption. As part of an on-going review of the implications of the Directive for Scotland, the Drinking Water Quality Regulator commissioned CREW to collate evidence on the presence of radon in drinking water and, create a map of ‘areas of likely high exposure’.

Wastewater treatment works in Scotland have evolved substantially in the past 20 years.  During the 1990s, major investments were made to comply with the Urban Wastewater Treatment directive.  These investments were designed to protect the environment from the adverse effects of urban waste water discharges, and were not specifically focused on odour control.   Odours continued to present issues at some sites, and in 2005, a statutory Code of Practice (CoP) for odour control at sewage works in Scotland was published by the Scottish Executive.