Scotland’s resilience capabilities will be boosted by a new national centre in Dumfries that will help improve responses to issues such as flooding.

The new centre, situated at Crichton Campus, will also act as a national hub; coordinating work to understand how best communities and local emergency responders can prepare for an anticipated increase in natural hazard events as a result of climate change.

The centre will look to support and help coordinate:

• Further improvement in Scotland’s resilience to natural hazards such as severe weather and flooding, augmenting existing systems and complement work of partners such as Adaptation Scotland
• Building community resilience across Scotland, learning from existing good practice across the South of Scotland
• Improvement in the protection and resilience of Scotland’s communities to flooding
• Development of Scotland’s resilience research capability
• Provision of resilience training and development opportunities and ensuring the identification and sharing of good practice
• Improvement in local multi-agency resilience arrangements and evaluation of the benefits to responders of investment in flood warning technology in the region

Partners in this ambitious and wide-ranging project include Dumfries and Galloway Council, Met Office, SEPA and emergency response organisations such as Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as well as the Scottish Funding Council and the Crichton Trust.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is leading work to harness the research capacity on resilience across Scotland. They will support development of a new Research Centre of Excellence for Scotland by leading a workshop involving academia, the Met Office, industry and other stakeholders. A panel will assess a proposal from a consortium prior to any Funding Council award.

SFC has also agreed in principle to fund two additional posts based at Crichton to help support the Research Centre of Excellence.

The announcement was made on a visit to Crichton Campus by Environment and Climate Change Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, who said:

“Scotland’s resilience arrangements are already widely recognised as robust but we must not rest on our laurels and this new centre will ensure we remain forward thinking in how we deal with natural hazards. As the recent severe weather, in the North of Scotland, has shown we cannot be complacent and residents of Dumfries and Galloway themselves understand only too well the impact of such events, having experienced horrendous conditions over the festive period. This centre will provide a focus of intelligence and skills and networking of good practice that will fulfil a national role to support emergency planning and response activities across all of Scotland.

“The Scottish Government resilience operations, and emergency response agencies and organisations like SEPA, Met Office, Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and local authorities have already worked together successfully in a number of challenging situations. This new centre will help build on these experiences and share existing knowledge with partners and communities throughout Scotland.

“We know that human activity is changing the global climate and extreme weather events are more common than they were previously. Scotland will not be immune and we are already seeing evidence of Scotland’s climate changing. With extreme weather events predicted to become more frequent, it is of the utmost importance that we are as prepared as possible to respond when these hit which is why we have put well developed resilience arrangements in place to help minimise their impacts.

“The facilities at Crichton Campus are first class and the proximity of the Campus to other institutions, including the Crichton Carbon Centre, the water rescue expertise of the local fire and rescue service and a very experienced team at Dumfries and Galloway Council provides an excellent opportunity for resilience partners, academia and the Scottish Government to work collaboratively on climate and flooding related resilience issues and to optimise multi-agency working.

“This approach sits well within the context of Dumfries and Galloway having already strong local resilience arrangements in place, with an emphasis on an integrated and multi-agency approach, which offers the prospect of the region presenting a good opportunity to provide practical training opportunities and to identify lessons with relevance for all Scotland. The Centre will be well placed to also evaluate the benefits to responders of the roll-out of further flood warning technology, with roll-out of the coastal flood warning system for the Solway scheduled for 2015.”

Dumfries and Galloway Council Leader, Ronnie Nicholson, said:

“I welcome this announcement from the Minister about the new Scottish Resilience Centre. Within this new resilience centre will be experts on community resilience, research into emergency planning and severe weather. It will also house quality research facilities.

“Dumfries and Galloway has been recognised nationally as having some of the best emergency planning arrangements in Britain, and have also been routinely recognised as having an innovative approach in the field. Our team have been asked to provide advice to other regions and agencies who have experienced emergency situations disruptive events including the recent flooding in Somerset. Basing the new Scottish Resilience Centre here is recognition that we have the skills and expertise here in our region.”

Joan McAlpine MSP welcomed the location of the new resilience centre at the Crichton Campus at Dumfries by saying that it showed that the single services were for the whole of Scotland not just the central belt.

She said:

“This new resilience centre of excellence draws on the great expertise we have in Dumfries and Galloway at tackling severe weather conditions in particular. The creation of single Scottish Police and Fire Services had cross party support and to a certain extent was forced on Scotland by severe cuts to our budget by the Westminster government. It was the best way to ensure we maintained the number of front line officers, which has been slashed down in England. However we have to push to make the single services work for the whole of Scotland. The best way to do this is to have hubs, or centres of excellence, in every corner of the country. This announcement shows that while we may have single services, they are not centralised services. They are for the benefit of every part of Scotland.

“People will come to train from all over Scotland and possibly beyond, bringing money into the economy and in particular bringing investment for the local food and drink, and accommodation sectors. It also helps the Crichton Campus which, like other universities, is a big economic generator with considerable potential to create jobs. The SNP government stepped in to save the Crichton Campus when it was under threat a few years ago and this announcement demonstrates their continuing commitment to the Crichton.

“Of course – the decision to locate the centre in Dumfries and Galloway is also a clear recognition of the outstanding existing expertise in the region in terms of emergency response services.”

David Pirie, Executive Director at SEPA, said:

“The founding of this national centre of excellence recognises the increasingly important role that community resilience will play in understanding, preparing for, and reacting to severe weather events in Scotland. This is a positive step towards co-ordinating a wide range of quality information, knowledge and understanding across many agencies and partnerships who work to keep Scotland running during adverse events.

“SEPA regards this new centre as complementary to the work it undertakes and furthers the Team Scotland approach which sees Scotland’s public bodies working together to deliver efficient and effective services.”