Projects

EvoFlood: The evolution of global flood hazard & risk

Collaborators: Greg Sambrook Smith, Louise Slater, Michel Wortmann
Affiliation: School of Geographical and Earth Sciences (University of Birmingham)

I am currently working on the EVOFLOOD project, a NERC funded research programme to address global flooding. Alongside colleagues from the University of Oxford, I use remote sensing datasets (including Landsat satellite imagery and the Global Surface Water product) to help develop estimates of bankfull flow and inundation frequency in rivers.

Project website: http://www.evoflood.co.uk/index.html

Flooded areas (red) from Typhoon Ulysses in the Cagayan Valley, Philippines (November, 2020) detected from Sentinel-1

Sediment flux and geomorphic change as drivers of flood risk in the Philippines

Collaborators: Richard Williams, Trevor Hoey, Pammie Tolentino, Laura Quick, CP David, Kirstie Fryirs, Gary Brierley
Affiliation: School of Geographical and Earth Sciences (University of Glasgow)

Between 2019 and 2021 I worked on a jointly funded UK-Philippines research project that investigated geomorphic change in the Philippines. The project used multi-temporal remote sensing datasets including satellite imagery, aerial imagery and LIDAR to assess morphological changes in tropical rivers. I developed innovative Google Earth Engine (GEE) workflows to analyse river channel change from repeat satellite imagery, processed high-resolution topographic data for geomorphic change detection analysis and ran 2D flood models (HECRAS-2D).

A key finding from the project was spatial complexity (“messiness”) of tropical riverscapes. This included the diversity of river types within a single catchment, through to the spatially heterogenous nature of river planform mobility at the national-scale. Key outputs from the project included:

Flyover of the Bislak River located in NW Luzon (Philippines)

Satellite imagery to support flood risk modelling in large European rivers

Collaborators: Michael Nones

Satellite imagery provides opportunities to map, quantify and detect changes in the riverscape that can be used to support varied flood risk and river management applications. By monitoring hydro-morpho-biodynamics and combining this information with 2D flood models, we will assess changing flood risk along the Po River (Italy) and Vistula River (Poland). Initial outputs from the project include:

MANGRO-ID: Multi-hazard Assessment of Mangroves for Resilience of Coastal Communities in Indonesia

Collaborators: Marco Baiguera, Dewi Nurhasanah, Ella Meilianda

This interdisciplinary climate action project will assess how mangroves provide multi-hazard resilience for coastal communities in Aceh and Central Java (Indonesia). The project results from small-grant success in an Indonesia-UK virtual workshop on reduction of climate change impact on flood risk in urban areas, organised by University of Greenwich and Universitas Indonesia, and funded by the British Council in the run up to COP26.

PhD PROJECT: modelling flow-vegetation interactions in rivers

Supervisors: Rich Hardy, Jeff Warburton
Affiliation: Department of Geography (University of Durham)

My PhD research focused on ecohydraulics and remote sensing; it involved modelling the effects of riparian vegetation on river flow. I designed laboratory-based flume experiments and used high-resolution numerical modelling (using computational fluid dynamics, CFD) to understand flow-vegetation interactions at the plant-scale.