World News Today: Emergency plans 'need scientists'

By Pallab Ghosh

The volcanic eruption in 2010 caused the biggest shut down of European airspace since World War II

The UK government's chief scientific adviser has said that officials "got it wrong" in failing to predict the impact of the volcanic ash cloud emergency last year.

Professor Sir John Beddington made his comments folowing publication of an assessment of the government's use of scientific advice during emergency situations by the House of Commons Science Select Committee.

MPs say that ministers sought advice too late and there's a lack of scientific input in evaluating risks.

Professor Beddington said: "We didn't expect volcanic ash - that wasn't on our risk assessment. It probably should have been when you look at the relative frequency of volcanic events in Iceland. We should have had that on the risk register".

When asked whether the the governemnt had got it wrong over volcanic ash professor Beddington replied "We failed to predict it was a likely event - absolutely."

The chair of the committee, Labour MP Andrew Miller, said the report showed that no scientific advice was put in place until after the event had occurred.

"Now that's not good enough," he told BBC News, "The role of government must be to plan for eventualities that could occur and then having the right mechanism in place to deal with events when they do occur."

The Icelandic volcanic eruption in April 2010 closed off UK airspace for more than a week, causing huge disruption to passengers and the airline industry as well as costing the UK economy hundreds of millions of pounds.

It caught the government unawares and research had to be hurriedly carried out to find out when it might be safe for planes to fly. And volcanologists had known for some time that this was an accident waiting to happen.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee examined the the use of scientific advice and evidence in national emergencies. The MPs said that the Iceland volcano was a "stark example" of the lack of scientific input in risk assessment.

The risk of disruption to aviation caused by a natural disaster was dropped from the assessment process in 2009, despite warnings from scientists.

"The broader Earth science community had been predicting events around Iceland for some considerable time," according to Mr Miller.

"That should have alerted the Civil Aviation Authority at a much, much earlier stage and we should have planned for that event".

In particular, MPs were concerned that the neither the government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, nor his team of chief scientists, is involved in evaluating risks to the nation.

This process is known known as the National Risk Assessment and is carried out by the Cabinet Office, which oversees all other government departments, in order to develop contingency plans for national emergencies, such as severe weather, pandemic flu and so-called cyber attacks to the country's computing infrastructure.

"The current system is flawed in many ways - not least of which is the NRA the basis on which Cabinet Office planning is put together doesn't include the right people," according to Mr Miller.

"This is why we are calling for the chief scientist to be based inside the Cabinet Office. And his network of experts - both inside government and beyond should be used to pre-plan (potential emergencies) to a much, much wider extent".

The Committee says that Transport Secretary Philip Hammond's announcement in December 2010 that Professor Beddington would look into future weather planning assumptions, following a spell of severe winter weather, suggested that he had little or no input to the risk assessments that must have taken place on severe weather.

In their report, the MPs call for greater involvement in emergency planning by the government's chief scientist and his team of experts, a new independent committee to advise the Cabinet on risks and more openness.

Professor Beddington says he is invovled in national risk assessments through his officials who are on relevent committees. But but agreed that more should be done to assess the impact of events which, though unlikely to happen, could have catastrophic effects if they were to occur. Such events include the impact of an asteroid on Earth.

"Where I think there is a problem is where there are unlikely events. One of the exercises I've started is to get a group of scientists together to look at low probability, high impact events and ask the question are we missing something?"

The MPs say that the Scientific Advisory Groups in Emergencies (Sage), set up to advise government during emergencies, are "unnecessarily secretive" enabling them to operate as they please during an emergency. The report calls for greater transparency so that the advice of the expert groups can be put under greater scrutiny.

Concerns over how risk was communicated to the public during the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic are also raised in the report. It highlights the sensationalised media reporting about the projected deaths from swine flu and questions the use of the concept of "reasonable worst case scenario".

The report also calls for the government to increase contributions to the European Space Agency's Programme to assess the risks from solar flares to satellites.

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