Official Statistics: Forestry Commission England (FCE): Headline Performance Indicators Update at 30 June 2018
The document will present Forestry Commission England’s six headline indicators: number of high priority forest pests in the UK Plant Health Risk Register, percentage of known tree felling that is carried out with Forestry Commission approval, percentage of woodland in active management, area of woodland, cost of managing the Public Forest Estate and number of private sector businesses operating on the Public Forest Estate.
Official Statistics: BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker: Wave 26
The 26th wave of PAT data was collected between 11 July to 17 July 2018 using face to face in-home interviews with a representative sample of 4,268 households in the UK.
Details of the methodology can be found in the key findings document.
This is the first wave of the expanded and improved BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker.
Press release: FCO Minister Mark Field to champion rules-based international system in Manila
Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field is visiting Manila today (16 August) for a programme that will include a keynote speech on the rules-based international system (RBIS) and discussions on strengthening further bilateral relations with the Philippines.
During his visit, the Minister will meet governmental officials including Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano, Department of Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez, Defence Secretary Maj Gen Delfin Lorenzana, and Senator Loren Legarda.
In his speech, Mr Field will join Australian Ambassador Amanda Gorley to highlight the benefits the RBIS has brought to all countries.
Speaking ahead of his visit to the Philippines, Minister Mark Field said:
The rules-based international system has had a hugely positive impact on global security and prosperity, protecting people and countries, and helping them to achieve their potential. This is why the UK is working so hard to cherish and protect these rules.
Mr Field will also meet members of the finance and business communities, as well as green finance experts and trade officials to raise the UK’s profile in the Philippines.
The Minister’s visit to Manila is the second stop on a six-country Southeast Asia trip.
Further information
News story: Medical team train in Oman for Exercise Saif Sareea 3
SS3 will take place across Oman in October and November. It is the UK armed forces’ lead exercise this year and the largest in 17 years. It is also the third UK-Oman joint exercise, with the previous two taking place in 1986 and 2001.
SS3 will showcase the UK and Oman’s ability to operate together in austere conditions through the deployment of a Coalition Joint Task Force.
Joint Forces Command’s (JFC) unique role in the exercise is in planning and enabling, demonstrating its world-leading ability to deploy internationally in challenging environments and run the vital functions of a successful exercise, such as logistics, command and control, and medical.
The Joint Medical Group will play a fundamental role in the safe delivery of the exercise. This week, as part of preparations for SS3, a Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) were put to the test in the 40-degree heat of the Omani desert.
As part of this week’s training, a doctor, nurse and two paramedics from MERT field tested a new method to transport life-saving blood.
They experimented with transporting blood for up to 72 hours, vastly increasing their capability to successfully treat casualties in the field.
Captain Murphy said:
We now store the blood from its arrival in theatre and maintain the cold chain throughout. We then prepare the Golden Hour Box in order to transport blood to a casualty.
The Golden Hour Box refers to the 72-hour cold storage that maintains the blood between 2-6°C.
Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Boylan, the MERT Consultant, added:
It has to stay in a very specific temperature range, which is challenging in this sort of environment.
The Medics, who are part of 5 Medical Regiment, are based in Duqm, Oman in preparation for SS3. Located in such an isolated part of the country, they must be prepared to treat a wide range of casualties. The nearest trauma hospital is many hours drive and up to four hours flight from Duqm.
Medical training and preparation will continue in the lead up to the exercise, including the testing of equipment and processes to confirm that the medical chain can deal with challenges before the bulk of UK forces arrive.
A series of Mutual Medical Drills Training packages will also run at Shafa, where Omani field medical unit personnel will join UK Joint Medical Group counterparts inside the deployed British facilities to work through a series of clinical scenarios.
News story: Environment Agency’s ‘Incident Management Portal’ receives international award
The Environment Agency’s Incident Management (IM) Portal has been awarded a ‘Special Achievement in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Award’ at the 2018 International ESRI User Conference in recognition of its outstanding use of GIS technology.
Launched in October 2016 the IM Portal has already:
Reduced the time between data capture and reporting during an incident
Improved the Environment Agency’s ability to easily share mapping internally and externally during an incident ensuring consistency
Simplified and standardised the tools used, and the process for capturing, storing, analysing and sharing data
Catherine Wright, Director for Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management said:
The Incident Management Portal is just one example of how the Environment Agency is working to improve incident response. The portal is a great example of how the Environment Agency is using technology to improve its response to environmental incidents – from everything to flooding and drought to tackling waste crime and improving biodiversity. It has revolutionised how we collect and use data during incidents by providing real-time data and images to our incident rooms across the country.
The portal has already proved invaluable during incidents and we are continuing to look at ways we can build on the system to maximise the longer term benefits from the data captured and use it to help inform future decision making. It is an honour to accept this international award on behalf of the team who have created this innovative system.
Stuart Bonthrone, Esri UK Managing Director, visited the Environment Agency office in Bristol where he presented the award.
The Incident Management Portal Team has put the Environment Agency at the forefront of this international audience.
At the conference in San Diego, Jack Dangermond, President and Founder of ESRI, said:
The work of the Environment Agency stood out from more than 100,000 other applicants and I would like to congratulate you on a job well done.
The Incident Management Portal was established following a review of the Environment Agency’s mapping capabilities after the floods of winter 2015/16. The review identified the need to improve how data is acquired, shared, and used during an incident.
The Incident Management Portal is just one example of how the Environment Agency is working to improve incident response. Since the flooding of 15/16, the Environment Agency has invested £12.5 million in new flood equipment including an additional 40km of temporary barriers, 500,000 sandbags and 250 pumps, including 12 ultra-high volume pumps. There are around 6,500 trained staff across the country, ready to respond to flooding, including 500 flood support officers and the Environment Agency have awarded a new Incident Management Logistics Contract to store and deploy the temporary flood defences.
More than 1.4 million people are signed up to the Environment Agency’s free flood warning service, which sends a message directly by voice message, text or email when a flood warning is issued. Over the last year the Environment Agency has partnered with mobile phone networks to automatically add thousands of mobile customers to the service and this work will continue throughout 2018.