Thinking Out Of The Box (7)

Thinking out of the box (also thinking out side of the box, thinking beyond the box or thinking the unthinkable) is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. The cliché, has become widely used and refers to novel or creative thinking. Thinking out of the box, is forcing yourself to give considerations to options that you might discount in the first place. To think outside the box is to look farther and to try not thinking of the obvious things, but to try thinking beyond them.

CaRT anticipates that the total incoming resources for the full 12 months 2013/14 will be £158m. Legal director Nigel Johnson has admitted in his statement to the high court that the annual costs of maintaining the inland waterways is £130 million a year. Yet the reality is that the Trust have been spending under than that amount. CaRT spent just £80m on its waterways last year and is expected to reduce that to only £75m this year. The shortfall figure is round about £50 million for last year and is estimated to be about £55 million this year.

Thinking the unthinkable about the long term future of the CaRT managed waterways. The question on some peoples mind is 'Is CaRT viable or heading for meltdown?'

It would appear that there is a prospect of a crisis occurring.  The underspend year on year is just pushing the backlog of maintenance into a deeper and deeper financial black hole. 

The signs are already looking a bit ominous. Lock gate requirement on a 25 year replacement schedule will soon outstrip even production of the gates. With current upgrades to lock gates at less than 50 a year. 

Vince Moran recently said: 'In short, over the last 10 years we have not been able to spend as much as we would have liked on some of the things which boaters take most notice of because we have had to focus maintenance expenditure on the highest risk parts of the network—those reservoirs, embankments, etc. There are 10,000 of them and their condition is graded from A to E (where A is the best condition and E is where there is a very real risk that the asset is close to failure). 10 years ago, as much as about 30% of Principal Structures were in the worst two grades (D and E) compared to now where the proportion is about 16%.'

While on first sight the above reduction sound's to be pretty good. That's a total of 3000 structures in the D and E band ten years ago. But that still totals 1500 plus that were in the DE grade ten years ago that are still in the same group ten years later. With the systematic under funding over the last ten years. Those 1500 outstanding items could have been eradicated. With the bulge in the number of gates requiring replacement. It's not going to be long before the brown stuff starts to hit the fan. How big is the accumulated underspend, estimates suggest that it could currently be as big as £750 million and growing.

oldWeather Project

Congratulations to one of the Zooniverse's senior projects - oldWeather is celebrating its third birthday tomorrow! The oldWeather project is looking at old sailing ship's logbooks. These have a lot of weather and climate information in them, and this is what we're mostly after - but one of the great things about citizen science is that by getting lots of people to look at something, we see the value in it that we missed at first. The participants in oldWeather have found all sorts of amazing and wonderful things in the logbooks we're reading - so much so that we now learn, and record, almost as much history as science.

Recovering all the old climate records we need is a big job: over the last three years we've read more than a million pages of logbooks, but there are many more to look at, so we still need your help. The present logs on the site are of voyages to the Arctic - not an easy place to sail, so there's occasional drama and disaster to go with the scientific records of ice and weather. If you can help, please go to the oldWeather website and pick your ship.

Don't forget: the person who classifies the most pages on each ship becomes the captain :)

There are many more details and examples on the oldWeather Blog and a friendly and helpful community on the oldWeather project forum Remember, to keep up with all news, results and amazing images from Old Weather you can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Google+.

Thanks for all your help, and we hope to see you on-line soon!

Rob and the Zooniverse Team

CaRT Mascot

On the lighter side of 'thinking out of the box.' I was wondering if the Canal and River Trust should have a Mascot. After all, the team that brought you trees in boats and poetry on lock gates. Plus it's the sort of thing that appeals to children so I thought the idea would also appeal to the Canal and River Trust Council. 

We often see fluffy furry mascots in the UK at rugby and football grounds. Mascots also get used at larger events such as the world cup (remember World Cup Willy) or sometimes more than one mascot is used.  Remember the sinister looking one-eyed Wenlock and Mandeville as used at the London Olympic Games. (no me neither)

I think I have come across a ready made mascot that could easily be donated for free, for the Canal and River Trust to use.  A mascot that encompasses the new dawn symbolised by the sunrise. Symbolising CaRT's new found interest in flora and fauna with bird wings. As well as the egg symbolising CaRT's re-birth from BW.

It seems that cuddly mascots are also commonplace among Japanese companies. Where mascot names are often formed from a pick and mix of English and Japanese words, resulting in the odd and surprising unexpected consequence.

Fridge manufacturer Fukushima Industries, which does not have any connection to the nuclear plant of the same name that leaked radio active materials in 2011 after a severe earthquake and tsunami. A message on the company’s website alongside the new mascot read: ‘I’m Fukuppy. I think I’m kind, with a strong sense of justice, but people say I’m a little bit scatter-brained.’

Fukushima Industries that named its new mascot Fukuppy has admitted it is thinking of starting a re-branding exercise. Fukuppy, which resembles a smiling egg with wings wearing red shoes, is a contraction of the company’s name and the English word happy, and is pronounced foo-koo-pee in Japanese.

This is not my first attempt at re-branding the inland waterways. I suggested a new logo for British Waterways some three years ago. Click Here to view.

Visitors to the canal.

I have puzzled long and hard over various figures bandied around about the number of visit and visitors to the inland waterways. The figures seem to suggest that around 10 million people visit the Canal and River Trust inland waterways. So I decided to see what I could do to gather the information. So I made a freedom of information request to the Canal and River Trust.

I see many references in various publications of the number of visitors to the canal network. I understand that CaRT currently estimate the visitors at 10 million a year. That description is quite a broad brush stroke figure. From my own experience it seems to me that the ten million figure is quite a significant footfall for anyone contemplating a canal side business venture.

However as far as I am aware the methodology used to calculate the ten million figure has not been published. This leads to quite a bit of speculation on my part to what the term 'visitor' actually means. Is the figure a total of 10 million individual people using the canal towpath on an annual basis. With a figure of 63.1 million total population for the United Kingdom published in 2012. That would be a truly astonishing figure.

Alternatively the figure could represent a much smaller group of individuals who walk a short distance several times a day. In this case the 'visitor' number would be significantly lower in numbers of real individual visitors. Could you provide details of the 'methodology' used and a definition of the term 'visitor.'

The Trust responded by saying that the requested information fell outside the terms of the FoI act. But I was pleased to see that they were not sticking to the point as a matter of principal. The Trust volunteered the following information.

You are indeed correct that the use of the term ‘visitor’ is often used in the leisure sector to refer to the number of visits people make as well as the number of people who actually visit. The Canal & River Trust monitors both visitors (people) and visits (occasions) through our Inland Waterways Visitor Survey (IWVS). The IWVS was established in 2003 and is currently conducted by independent market research agency BDRC Continental. The IWVS is a telephone survey that runs continuously through the year, interviewing almost 12,000 people annually.

A nationally representative sample of just under 1,000 adults is interviewed each month. Data is weighted on a monthly basis to the national GB population profile in terms of region, sex and age. A Random Digit Dialling (RDD) approach is used. This is a system which offers a totally geographically unclustered sample; vital since an individual’s usage of waterways is determined in part by their proximity to waterways (either living or working).

The visitor figure referred to, of around 10 million is based on the number of people who say they have visited a canal in the last year. Some will only have visited once, perhaps to a canal side pub for Sunday lunch; others may be visiting everyday as their route to work or to walk the dog. We know asking about behaviour over the last year presents some problems – some people may think back beyond a year, others will have forgotten their visit. We feel however, that this measure gives us a reasonable overview of visitor behaviour on an annual basis.

We also measure total visit occasions, and although there is obviously varies from year to year, depending on the weather, external events as well as our own marketing and communications. It is usually around 300 million visits.

The total visits figure is gathered by first asking people if they have visited one of our waterways in the last two weeks. Why two weeks? Two weeks is used as it is short enough to accurately remember more detailed information about their visit, but gives a larger and more robust sample than just asking about visits in the last week. Some people may have only visited once; others may have visited lots, doing different activities on different occasions. By counting all these different occasions we can monitor the number of visits made each month and in total over the year.

There was an amendment made to the request. I did this because, what was not clear was whether the waterways were limited to the Canal and River Trust waterways or the waterways in general.

Thanks for the reply and the information was helpful in improving my understanding the difference between visitor and visits. There is an annotation to the original request by Mr Richards.

I would suggest that the requester asks for clarification regarding the word 'canal' in the response. In particular, ask if 'canal' means the Trust's canal's, all the Trust's waterways (i.e. canals, rivers, reservoirs etc), or does it include non-trust waterways?

The more I think about the content of the annotation the more I have come to realise. That to get a more complete understanding. It would be useful to know if the figures are based upon visits/visitor to any waterway or if the figures apply only to visits to the trusts waterways.

Once again the Trust waived the fact that there was no compulsion upon them to answer my Freedom of Information Request. 

The figures are based only on visits/visitors to any of the Trust's waterways, no others.

You may wonder why the Trust is collecting such information. One reason is because of what are known as KPI or 'Key Performance Indicators'.  If you like, the trust has certain performances to aim for and visitor/visit numbers are one of them. Not meeting a KPI could mean that the money received each year by the trust from DEFRA could be reduced. I think it is good that there are such checksums in place. It means that there is a financial incentive for the trust to meet the KPI and that the inland waterways will benefit from such monitoring.

Thinking Out of The Box (6)

Thinking out of the box (also thinking out side of the box, thinking beyond the box or thinking the unthinkable) is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. The cliché, has become widely used and refers to novel or creative thinking. Thinking out of the box, is forcing yourself to give considerations to options that you might discount in the first place. To think outside the box is to look farther and to try not thinking of the obvious things, but to try thinking beyond them.

Boats travelling at a fast pace cause damage to soft banks. Boats not slowing down on the narrower/shallower waterways can even cause moored boats to pull out their pins. We have all sat on our boat when some uncaring individual passes at a speed that causes discomfort.

Well, it seems that education has failed. So, what can be done to curb such behaviour.

Speed is one common source of conflict between the experienced and the inexperienced boater. The first idea is for hire boats to have their forward speed regulated. Often first time hire boaters do not appreciate the scale of the problem that they are creating.

Deterrent using a technology solution.

Insurance companies are introducing speed monitoring devices. Often fitted as a requirement to the younger age group owned vehicles. Done as a means of lowering driving speeds and also lowering the insurance premium. Maybe such devices could be fitted to all boats to monitor speed over sections of canal where bank erosion is a particular problem. Such systems could be interrogated  by the boat licensing enforcement team with their hand held tablet boat checking system.