CEE Seminar: UCI CHRS’s Global Satellite Precipitation Products - Challenges & Opportunities

Abstract: Precipitation is a key variable in hydrological processes and varies within time and space. Extreme precipitation events may cause natural disasters, and these events vary in many different regions of the world. Droughts may occur if there is little to no precipitation, while one of the most devastating natural hazards, floods, can happen when there is heavy precipitation. Understanding and monitoring precipitation is crucial to society. Besides the traditional methods (gauges, radars), satellite technologies have been developed and applied successfully in precipitation observation since the 1970s. This presentation introduces new satellite precipitation products and tools developed by the Center for Hydrometeorology & Remote Sensing (CHRS, http://chrs.web.uci.edu) at UC Irvine.  

Speaker Bio: Phu Nguyen is a postdoctoral scholar in hydrology and water resources at UCI's Center for Hydrometeorology & Remote Sensing (CHRS), Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.  He received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 2003 from Bach Khoa University – HCMC in Vietnam and a master's degree in engineering science in 2008 from the University of Melbourne, under the Australian Government Scholarship. In 2010, Nguyen was among the young scientists receiving a two-year Vietnamese International Educational Development fellowship to pursue his Ph.D. degree program at UCI. His research interests include flood warnings, global extreme satellite precipitation events database using object-oriented approaches, integrated system for global satellite precipitation and information, and global real-time satellite and crowdsourced precipitation observations for hydrologic and natural disaster management applications.