Yorkshire iCASP

The Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) is a research translation programme, which received £4.82M of Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) funding between 2017-2024 in order to capitalise upon existing environmental science to deliver societal and environmental impacts across Yorkshire.

It set out to support partnerships between regional organisations and researchers to co-design ways of managing flood and drought risk, improving water quality, and enhancing the carbon storage, productivity and resilience of soils and woodlands, through joined-up approaches to land and water management in the River Ouse basin, covering almost eleven thousand square kilometres. Since 2017, iCASP has become a highly valued and successful impact-delivery network, using transdisciplinary environment-centred research to embed solutions across partners.

iCASP has directly informed and influenced regional and national policy, supported communication and cohesion among regional stakeholders, provided new ways of working, and strengthened the confidence among regional networks in NERC-funded environmental science.

Continuing to deliver outcomes
While the NERC-funding for iCASP has now ended, through partnerships and new sources of funding, iCASP remains as a sustainable regional resource for stakeholders and is seeking to deliver more ambitious outcomes. This ensures the original NERC-funded iCASP project outputs can continue to have impact, and iCASP can now strive towards unlocking £1Bn of investment in the region by 2030.