Monitoring, evaluation and learning from programme activities
As with all SPF programmes, UK Climate Resilience activities were rigorously monitored to ensure accountability. In addition, there was an ambition to identify imaginative and meaningful ways to measure the contribution of the funded research towards the programme goals.
This involved engaging with the funded projects to identify areas of common interest and overarching programme level questions. These supported the synthesis of emerging lessons across the programme and drew out relevant lessons and stories of change that can be shared more widely to show how the funded activities are contributing to ensuring that the UK become more climate resilient.
To guide the development of the monitoring, evaluation and learning work, an overarching framework was developed that links the “legacy items” outlined in the Science Plan with the programme vision and objectives. This also provides an overarching narrative to connect fragmented research, researchers and research users. By plotting the funded activities of the programme onto this it is possible to identify research, knowledge brokering, cross-programme working, gaps and next steps for the programme.
The framework was used to: support continuous improvement / adaptive management of the programme; identify potential risks to the successful delivery of the programme and ways to ameliorate them; and challenge assumptions about how change works in the programme.
A visual of this overarching narrative is available (in pdf format) here.