CEE Seminar (ZOOM): The Quest for Knowledge on Extreme Events, Vulnerabilities and Risks

Abstract: Extreme events, in particular floods and droughts, impose significant global-scale socio-economic vulnerability and risk that are likely to increase in the future under climate change and human development. The massive impacts provoked by these extremes are clear motivation for improved understanding of the key drivers that characterize such events. This presentation is multifold to report a few studies we have conducted recently to address the linkage of data revolution and assimilation, Earth system modeling, and socio-economic characteristics of extremes, vulnerability, risk and resilience that are necessary to account for damages to economy and casualties from hydroclimatic natural hazards.

Bio: Hamid Moradkhani is the Alton N. Scott Endowed Chair of hydrology in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering and also the founding director of the Center for Complex Hydrosystems Research at the University of Alabama. Previously, he was a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Remote Sensing and Water Resources Lab at Portland State University. He is a pioneer in developing state-of-the-art Bayesian data assimilation and uncertainty quantification methods that are widely used in different disciplines and a variety of applications, in particular on monitoring and forecasting extreme events including floods and droughts. His research emphasis is on harnessing data revolution, predictive science, machine learning, data analytics, remote sensing and high-performance computing in the context of Earth system science. His research also advances our understanding of hydrologic science through modeling climate-water-human interactions and food-energy-water nexus. He is on the editorial board of several journals, is a licensed professional engineer and was inducted in the UCI Samueli School of Engineering's Hall of Fame in 2015. Moradkhani is on the advisory board and panel of several international networks on floods, droughts and water utilities. He is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Environmental and Water Resources Institute, a Diplomat, Water Resources Engineer, and the recipient of several awards, including the ASCE Arid Lands Hydraulic Engineering Award, Outstanding Research and Innovation Award from the American Association of Water Resources Engineers, Faculty Research Excellence Award and Branford P. Millar Award for exceptional scholarship in research, instruction, university and public service.