Dr Paul Jeffrey

Dr Paul Jeffrey, Cranfield Unversity

Reader in Water Management
Location: Building 39
E: p.j.jeffrey@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1234 754814
Sustainable Systems


Current activities

Dr Paul Jeffrey’s research activities cross both problem and disciplinary boundaries but are focused on water management as a context. A central theme of his work is the critical evaluation of contemporary resource management theories such as Integrated Water Resources Management and Adaptive Management. He has also conducted and reported personal research on the nature of Integrated Assessment and cross-disciplinary research collaboration, reporting ‘coal face’ studies of collaboration between social and natural scientists. Working on the challenges of managing socio-natural systems and of understanding basin scale and regional sustainability have led to the design and use of computer based tools to support natural resource management in general and basin management in particular.

Stakeholder engagement and participatory planning / management are cornerstones of modern approaches to resource management and Paul has been active engaged in both research and capacity building activities in this field. He has investigated the ambitions and dynamics of participatory planning and management processes as well as the roles that risk perception and the homogeneity of stakeholder group attitudes play on social learning processes. This work on participatory planning and management has led to an analysis of the role that legitimacy plays in inter-stakeholder dialogue and the development of methods to evaluate such legitimacy landscapes.

Water recycling has been another fruitful area of research for Paul since he joined Cranfield and his activities in this area have seen him contribute to an assessment of water recycling potential at European scale. Other activities in the field of water recycling have included public perceptions of sub-potable water quality, greywater characterisation, and assessment of appropriate scale for water recycling technology application.

Paul is also Manager of the STREAM EngD programme.

Clients

  • EPSRC
  • EU FP7
  • EC DG Environment
  • Environment Agency
  • Leverhulme Trust
  • United Utilities
  • Cambridge Water

Background

Dr Paul Jeffrey holds a first class honours degree in ‘Science & Society’, an MSc in ‘Energy and Environment’ and obtained his doctorate in Technology Policy from Cranfield in 1992. As a post-doc researcher he spent three years studying sustainable development issues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, returning to Cranfield in 1996.

A Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management Paul’s research focuses on the development of sustainable water use arrangements and the relationships between human (socio-cultural, psychological, behavioural, economic), natural (water quality, environmental) and technological (engineering, technology & infrastructure design) dimensions of water management. His research activities cover areas such as water recycling, water policy tools, water resources management, and technology assessment.

In addition to his work on water resources he also has interests in the theory and practice of cross-disciplinary working and the application of complex systems theories. He has contributed over 100 journal & conference publications in fields as diverse as water resources management, science and society, technology assessment, social justice, and complex systems. He has served on expert panels for CIRIA and UKWIR and on the expert review panel for the IPCC AR4 report. In 2000 his work on the application of complex systems theories to design and management problems won the Swiss National Science Foundation's prize for Transdisciplinarity.

Selected publications

  • Pahl-Wostl, C., J. Sendzimir and P. Jeffrey. (2009). Resources Management in Transition. Ecology and Society 14 (1): 46. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/...
  • Alam, U., Dione, O., and Jeffrey, P. (2009) The benefit-sharing principal: Implementing sovereignty bargains on water. Political Geography. 28 (2) 90-100.
  • Fox, C., McIntosh, B.S., and Jeffrey, P. (2009) Classifying households for water demand forecasting using physical property characteristics. Land Use Policy. 26. 558-568.
  • Ker Rault, P. and Jeffrey, P. (2008) On the appropriateness of public participation in Integrated Water Resources Management: some grounded insights from the Levant. Integrated Assessment. 8 (2). 69–106 [online] URL: http://journals.sfu.ca/int_assess/index.php/iaj/article/view/262/244
  • Medema, W., B. S. McIntosh, and P. J. Jeffrey. (2008). From premise to practice: a critical assessment of integrated water resources management and adaptive management approaches in the water sector. Ecology and Society 13(2): 29. [online]
    Muro, M. and Jeffrey, P. (2008) A critical review of the theory and application of social learning in participatory natural resource management processes. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. 51 (3). 325-344
  • Butcher, J. and Jeffrey, P. (2007) A view from the coal face: UK research student perceptions of successful and unsuccessful collaborative projects. Research Policy. 36. 1239-1250
  • Jeffrey, P. & McIntosh, B. S. (2007) Description, diagnosis, prescription: a critique of the application of co-evolutionary models to natural resource management. Environmental Conservation. 33 (4) 281-293

Further publications