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Research project

Support the development of standardised risk datasets for Pacific Small Island Developing States and their extension to other Small Island States to support the conceptualisation and formulation of projects to address agricultural vulnerability and risk r

Staff

Lead researcher

Professor Chris Hill

Professorial Fellow-Enterprise
Connect with Chris

Email: cth@geodata.soton.ac.uk

Other researchers

Professor David Sear

Professor
Connect with David

Email: D.Sear@soton.ac.uk

Professor Craig Hutton

Director Sustainability&Resilience Inst.
Connect with Craig

Email: cwh@geodata.soton.ac.uk

Professor Ivan Haigh

Professor

Research interests

  • I currently have 8 active research grants (4 as principle investigator (PI)) worth £4.8M. 
  • I am the PI on two international grants that started in 2019, both looking at compound flooding. Compound flooding (when the combination, or successive occurrence of, two or more hazard events leads to an extreme impact e.g., coastal and fluvial flooding), can greatly exacerbate the adverse consequences associated with flooding in coastal regions and yet it remains under-appreciated and poorly understood. In the £788k NERC- and NSF- (US National Science Foundation) funded CHANCE project, I am leading a team (working alongside researchers from the University of Central Florida), to deliver a new integrated approach to make a step-change in our understanding, and prediction of, the source mechanisms driving compound flood events in coastal areas around the North Atlantic basin. In the £575k NERC- and NAFOSTED- (Vietnam’s National Foundation for Science and Technology Development) funded project, I am leading a team that is working with colleagues in Vietnam to map and characterise present, and predict future, flood risk from coastal, fluvial, and surface sources and, uniquely, to assess the risk of compound flooding across the Mekong delta; one of the three most vulnerable deltas in the world. I am also the PI on a grant, which started in 2021. In this 41k project, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat), we are assessing past and future closures of the six storm surge barriers in the Netherlands.
  • In 2021, I was awarded a 3-year (50% of my time) prestigious Knowledge Exchange Fellowship funded by NERC (UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council) and worth £154k. This fellowship builds strongly on my prior research and the overall goal is to provide guidance and tools that will help storm surge barrier operators better prepare for the impacts of climate change across every area of their operation now and into the future. Within the fellowship I am working primary with the UK Environment Agency (EA) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat). However, to ensure the work undertaken can benefit all the existing (and planned) surge barriers around the world, I am also working closely with I-STORM. I-STORM is an international knowledge sharing network for professionals relating to the management, operation and maintenance of storm surge barriers, and has representation from all the surge barriers worldwide.
Connect with Ivan

Email: I.D.Haigh@soton.ac.uk

Professor Justin Sheffield

Head of School

Research interests

  • Large-scale hydrology and its interactions with climate variability and change.
  • Hydrological extremes, climate change, and hydrological processes from catchment to global scale.
  • The application of fundamental research to natural hazards impacts reduction, including monitoring and prediction systems.
Connect with Justin

Email: Justin.Sheffield@soton.ac.uk

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Environmental Change and Sustainability

We carry out geospatial analysis and experimentation to understand environmental change and potential solutions.

GeoData

We manage, analyse and process environmental data. Our consultancy services and interdisciplinary research projects range from managing river catchments and coastal zones to the wider fields of environment, social and economic development.

Landscape Dynamics and Ecology

Researching the changing environments and landscapes using the appliction of novel methodological approaches.

Physical Oceanography

The research group explores patterns of change and variability in satellite and in-situ measurements of surface temperature, sea level and productivity.

Research outputs