Chad Staddon

University of the West of England, Bristol | UWE Bristol · Department of Geography and Environmental Management

In recent weeks, people all over the world have been settling into a ‘new normal’ of restricted mobility, online working, social distancing and enhanced hand hygiene. As part of the global fight against the spread of COVID-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2), we are repeatedly reminded by public health authorities that frequent and thorough hand-...

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a set of public guidelines for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention measures that highlighted handwashing, physical distancing, and household cleaning. These health behaviors are severely compromised in parts of the world that lack secure water supplies, particularly in low- and mi...

Water scholarship has advanced considerably in recent decades. Despite this remarkable progress, water challenges may be growing more quickly than our capacity to solve them. While much progress has been made toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 — water and sanitation for all — new stressors have emerged to threaten this progress. Far fr...

Managing complex disaster risks requires interdisciplinary efforts. Breaking down silos between law, social sciences, and natural sciences is critical for all processes of disaster risk reduction. This enables adaptive systems for the rapid evolution of AI technology, which has significantly impacted the intersection of law and natural environments...

Perceptions of drinking water safety shape numerous health-related behaviors and attitudes, including water use and valuation, but they are not typically measured. We therefore characterize self-reported anticipated harm from drinking water in 141 countries using nationally representative survey data from the World Risk Poll (n = 148,585 individual...

Urban flooding has made it necessary to gain a better understanding of how well gully pots perform when overwhelmed by solids deposition due to various climatic and anthropogenic variables. This study investigates solids deposition in gully pots through the review of eight models, comprising of four deterministic models, two hybrid models, a statis...

Climate change, ageing infrastructure, and funding shortfalls threaten the sustainability of modern, 20th century centralised water systems by increasing drinking water costs and undermining water security, particularly for underserved populations. Modular, adaptive, and decentralised (MAD) water infrastructures can address this by using novel tech...

Water security requires not only sufficient availability of and access to safe and acceptable quality for domestic uses, but also fair distribution within and across populations. However, a key research gap remains in understanding water security inequality and its dynamics, which in turn creates an impediment to tracking progress towards sustainab...

In 2018, Albrecht et al., published a comprehensive review of water-energy-food nexus literature, coming to five main criticisms in nexus research based on their perception of the state-of-the-art. The five central conclusions of that review together with a consideration of more recent initiatives form the basis for this critical review. The curren...

Blue and Green Infrastructure (BGI) is increasingly viewed as a promising solution to promoting a shift beyond traditionally engineered “grey” approaches towards more socially and environmentally sustainable infrastructure systems. The specific insights geographical scholarship on how to address issues of processes, scale and place in BGI design, i...

Household survey data from 27 sites in 22 countries were collected in 2017–2018 in order to construct and validate a cross-cultural household-level water insecurity scale. The resultant Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) scale presents a useful tool for monitoring and evaluating water interventions as a complement to traditional metrics...

Poor drinking water quality is a global crisis that affects billions of individuals. Understanding who is most impacted is necessary to develop programs that ensure sustainable, reliable, and resilient access to safe water. But current water indicators do not capture people’s experienced and anticipated harm from drinking water, which means we have...

Over the last decade, water security has replaced sustainability as the key optic for thinking about how we manage water. This reframing has offered benefits (including clear recognition of the link between humans, the environment and the right to water) and also posed challenges (the tendency in some quarters to interpret “security” solely in term...

The sharp increase in the utilisation and demand of construction materials across the world, especially in road, pavements and transportation sectors has resulted in an unsustainable surge in the amount of carbon emissions. This study investigated the use of low-carbon materials in permeable pavements systems (PPS) and the effects of various low-ca...

The monograph is devoted to problems of water services economics and policy, water usage, sewerage, management, quality and pollution of waters, monitoring, measures to improve the state of water objects, quality of water, system and technology of sewage treatment. The monograph prepared and funded under Erasmus+ Jean Monnet actions 597938-EPP-1-20...

We sought to determine whether a shortened version of the 12-item Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale, which measures water insecurity equivalently in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), is valid for broad use. Using data from 9,261 households in 25 LMICs, subsets of candidate items were evaluated on their predictive accuracy,...

The sharp increase in the utilisation and demand of construction materials across the world, especially in road, pavements and transportation sectors has resulted in an unsustainable surge in the amount of carbon emissions. This study investigated the use of low-carbon materials in permeable pavements systems (PPS) and the effects of various low-ca...

Scholars and practitioners have been working on methodologies to measure water security at a variety of scale and focus. In this paper, we critically examine the landscape of water security metrics, discussing the progress and gaps of this rich scholarship. We reviewed a total of 107 publications consisting of 17 conceptual papers and 90 methodolog...

Time-limited Elsevier link to full-text: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1c2eZ5Ce0rdYcg Recent high-profile analyses of trajectories and prognoses of ecosystem decline around the world have called for a renewed focus on embedding the values of the natural world across all areas of public policy. This paper reports the results of a UK-based deliberat...

[This corrects the article PMC7566692.].

Water problems due to scarcity, inaccessibility, or poor quality are a major barrier to household functioning, livelihood, and health globally. Household-to-household water borrowing has been posited as a strategy to alleviate unmet water needs. However, the prevalence and predictors of this practice have not been systematically examined. Therefore...

About a million Rohingyas have fled due to the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and sought refuge in Bangladesh. The refugees are located in temporary settlements on hilly areas of Cox’s Bazar with inadequate water and sanitation facilities, giving rise to diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and diarrhea. This exploratory study reports drinking water sec...

About a million Rohingyas have fled due to the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and sought refuge in Bangladesh. The refugees are located in temporary settlements on hilly areas of Cox’s Bazar with inadequate water and sanitation facilities, giving rise to diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and diarrhea. This exploratory study reports drinking water sec...

This issue of the UNC Water Institute WaSH Policy Research Digest explores the strengths and weaknesses of a newly published tool for assessing household scale water insecurity, the "HWISE Scale".

In this commentary we draw attention to water sharing as political, highlighting the stakes and concerns around such practices. We engage a broad definition of politics, capturing everyday acts and practices that might be interpreted along a gradient ranging from mundane and banal forms of resistance, to refusal, to more obvious and visible acts of...

There is rising international concern about the zoonotic origins of many global pandemics. Increasing human-animal interactions are perceived as driving factors in pathogen transfer, emphasising the close relationships between human, animal and environmental health. Contemporary livelihood and market patterns tend to degrade ecosystems and their se...

Improving water governance is a top priority for addressing the global water crisis. Yet, there is a dearth of empirical data examining whether better water governance is associated with lower water insecurity and improved well-being. We, therefore, pooled household data from two Sustainable Water Effectiveness Reviews conducted by Oxfam GB in Zamb...

With 2.3 billion people around the world lacking adequate sanitation services, attention has turned to alternative service provision models. This study suggests an approach for meeting the sanitation challenge, especially as expressed in Sustainable Development Goal 6.2, using a toilet technology system, such as Pee Power® that generates electricit...

The chapter explores the main problems associated with the use of hydraulic fracturing for the production of shale gas in Ukraine. Special attention is paid to water issues. A detailed SWOT-analysis of the problem was carried out. Territorial distribution of water resources is uneven and unfortunately does not match the regions of greatest energy o...

Billions of people globally, living with various degrees of water insecurity, obtain their household and drinking water from diverse sources that can absorb a disproportionate amount of a household's income. In theory, there are income and expenditure thresholds associated with effective mitigation of household water insecurity, but there is little...

This book addresses the need for deeper understanding of regulatory and policy regimes around the world in relation to the use of water for the production of ‘unconventional’ hydrocarbons, including shale gas, coal bed methane and tight oil, through hydraulic fracturing. Legal, policy, political and regulatory issues surrounding the use of water fo...

The last 20 years have seen dramatic growth in the production of oil and gas from shale, as production techniques developed in the latter half of the twentieth century have advanced under largely favorable economic conditions. Hydraulic fracturing is a well stimulation technique in which sand and other proppants suspended in fluids are forced at hi...

This volume addresses the growing need to improve understanding of effective regulatory and policy regimes in relation to water used to operate unconventional hydrocarbon operations around the world. As the chapters in this book clearly show, legal, policy, regulatory, and political issues surrounding the use of water for hydraulic fracturing are p...

Objective Progress towards equitable and sufficient water has primarily been measured by population-level data on water availability. However, higher-resolution measures of water accessibility, adequacy, reliability and safety (ie, water insecurity) are needed to understand how problems with water impact health and well-being. Therefore, we develop...

Objectives: Food and water insecurity have both been demonstrated as acute and chronic stressors and undermine human health and development. A basic untested proposition is that they chronically coexist, and that household water insecurity is a fundamental driver of household food insecurity. Methods: We provide a preliminary assessment of their...

This paper gives an overview of the main challenges and achievements faced by Windhoek's water management sector. The paper highlights pertinent issues arising from increased water demand, and also explores current and future water supply augmentation options. Water planners experience management challenges as a result of a combination of factors,...

Urban resilience emerges not only from 'what' is done in relation to critical infrastructure systems, but in the 'how' of their conception, co-creation and integration into complex socio-ecological-technical systems. For green infrastructure, where ownership and agency may be distributed amongst organisations and diverse communities, inclusiveness...

Green infrastructure (GI) has been identified as a promising approach to help cities adapt to climate change through the provision of multiple ecosystem services. However, GI contributions to urban resilience will not be realized until it is more fully mainstreamed in the built environment and design professions. Here, we interrogate five key chall...

Water sharing between households could crucially mitigate short‐term household water shortages, yet it is a vastly understudied phenomenon. Here we use comparative survey data from eight sites in seven sub‐Saharan African countries (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda) to answer three questions: Wit...

In the UK, water supplies are under pressure from climate, population and lifestyle change. Showering is the largest component of domestic water consumption. Young adults are high water-users at a transitional life-stage, when practices are dynamic, and habits shaped. This paper presents the methodology, early findings and reflections on challenges...

Introduction A wide range of water-related problems contribute to the global burden of disease. Despite the many plausible consequences for health and well-being, there is no validated tool to measure individual- or household-level water insecurity equivalently across varying cultural and ecological settings. Accordingly, we are developing the Hous...

This article investigates the reasons householders do, and don’t, adopt domestic rainwater harvesting (DRWH). Using a mixed-methods research approach, we collected data in three districts in central Uganda. Factors that emerged as important with respect to uptake of DWRH to address water shortage, especially at the household scale, include the work...

After briefly reviewing key resilience engineering perspectives and summarising some green infrastructure (GI) tools, we present the contributions that GI can make to enhancing urban resilience and maintaining critical system functionality across complex integrated social–ecological and technical systems. We then examine five key challenges for the...

Water sharing offers insight into the everyday and, at times, invisible ties that bind people and households with water and to one another. Water sharing can take many forms, including so‐called “pure gifts,” balanced exchanges, and negative reciprocity. In this study, we examine water sharing between households as a culturally embedded practice th...

Very large marine protected areas are in danger of becoming 'paper parks'. This paper uses an interdisciplinary team to investigate the use of remote sensing technologies to provide sufficient evidence for effective fisheries management. It uses the intended marine protected area around Ascension Island as a case study. Satellite technology provide...

Resilience engineering requires new approaches that take into consideration the multidimensional challenges that cities will likely face or are already facing (Ahern 2011). Against this backdrop, Green Infrastructure (GI) is becoming a critical part of cities’ approaches towards resilience.GI has the potential to enhance resilience to climate chang...

Globally, groundwater is by far the largest store of liquid freshwater, making it a key component of a secure water supply. However, over the past few decades the amount of usable groundwater available around the world has rapidly decreased. This depletion is caused primarily by mismanagement (e.g., overpumping, contamination, and under-regulation)...

Household water insecurity has serious implications for the health, livelihoods and wellbeing of people around the world. Existing methods to assess the state of household water insecurity focus largely on water quality, quantity or adequacy, source or reliability, and affordability. These methods have significant advantages in terms of their simpl...

Increasingly relied upon, groundwater is nevertheless relatively underappreciated and understudied. Perhaps as a consequence of these facts, around the world unregulated exploitation is placing this resource under increasingly intense pressure, necessitating new governance systems if a negative spiral of ecological, social and economic decline is t...

Our aim in this paper is not to abandon, but rather reconceptualize, water security in ways that explicitly link to broader social and political relations that enable benefits to water related services (e.g., drinking, recreation, productive uses, cultural practices) rather than focus on the materiality of access to water in and of itself. Our conc...

Increased use of reclaimed water could be one of the solutions to Beijing’s growing water shortage, particularly for non-potable (e.g. landscaping) purposes. The dragon-shaped river, a large artificial waterscape built on the site of the 2008 Beijing Olympic games, offers a useful case study of the issues and challenges attendant on wastewater recl...

Urban governance is as much about infrastructure as it is about people and processes. In particular, the history of urban governance is closely intertwined with the history of urban water services. Historically, as urban areas became larger and more densely inhabited, the collective need for better water services (drinking water, sanitation and flo...

The monograph is devoted to problems of water services economics and policy, water usage, sewerage, management, quality and pollution of waters, monitoring, measures to improve the state of water objects, quality of water, system and technology of sewage treatment. The monograph was published with the support of British Council in the joint project...

As there is no general right to be defended from flooding, any measures taken to protect communities from flooding would appear to be motivated by political considerations. This article explores the possibilities open to a party seeking to benefit from flood defences on another person’s land. The possibilities include an action in nuisance (which i...

In 2012 UWE, Bristol entered into partnership with Bristol Water to initiate a longitudinal, multimethod study of water consumption by students in first year accommodations on the main UWE campus at Frenchay, Bristol. Now in the third cycle (each runs from September to June, following the academic year) of this study we are in a position to report...

Hydraulic fracturing, or 'fracking', involves the extraction of natural gas from shale formations deep underground using vertical and horizontal drilling technologies and vast quantities of chemically treated water injected into the wells under high pressure. Although commercial fracking has been underway in the USA since the 1990s, the industry is...

“How Much Water Do We Use, and How Much Can We Save? Data from a Joint Initiative with Bristol Water, PLC” • The largest experimental study of its kind, studying both “all water” and “hot water” use • Mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology • Baseline water consumption is higher than expected • Water conservation interventions often have per...

Stakeholder handbook and case studies from the SWAN Project

In this paper I argue that the global water crisis is a full "hydrosocial" phenomenon -- emerging from the crucible of governmentalities linked to control over population and nature. This argument is not merely "academic", but has implications for the challenge of providing water services to all world citizens, including the non-human ones.

I prepared these guidelines to help collaborators prepare balanced and comparable case studies of urban water services development for any city around the world.

Over the last decade the concept of water security has emerged from the policy literature linked to international security and hydropolitics, rapidly becoming discursively hegemonic. Indeed, in some quarters it seems even to be supplanting the hegemonic position hitherto occupied by the concept of sustainable water. Analytical reviews of the litera...