Lucy Barker

Lucy is specialised in drought research in the UK and around the world. She works to advance hydrological drought characterisation and improve implementation of drought indicators for monitoring and early warning applications on projects in the UK, Europe, China, India and Thailand. Lucy led the development of guidance for countries to monitor their progress towards UNCCD Strategic Objective 3, tracking trends in drought hazard, exposure and vulnerability over time with the aim of enhancing the resilience of vulnerable populations and ecosystems to drought. In the DrIVER project, she explored the use of standardised drought indices in the UK and contributed to research linking indices to impacts in order to ground-truth indices used for monitoring and early warning. Within the Historic Droughts project she identified, characterised and ranked drought events for catchments across the UK between 1891-2015. Using these data she developed the ‘UK Hydrological Drought Explorer’ an interactive web app enabling users to explore the analysis in more detail.

Lucy leads the National Hydrological Monitoring Programme, authoring the monthly Hydrological Summary for the UK and occasional reporting of extreme events for an audience that encompasses the government, media and general public. Within ENDOWS, she contributed to the development of the UK Water Resources Portal, including engagement and co-design with a range of stakeholders.

Lucy also works with the World Meteorological Organization on the implementation and coordination of the Hydrological Status and Outlook (HydroSOS) initiative. Her work aims to better inform decision-makers, improve resilience and reduce vulnerability to hydrological hazards.