Toward More Resilient Hydrosystems: Flood and Drought Hazards, Vulnerability and Risk in a Changing Climate
Presenter
Hamid
Moradkhani
Alton
N.
Scott
Endowed
Chair
in
Civil
and
Environmental
Engineering
University
of
Alabama
Abstract
A grand challenge for current and future generations is to promote sustainable solutions for water systems. Two key aspects of this view toward water systems resilience and sustainability are: (a) multi-disciplinary research to understand and model the climate-water-ecosystem linkages, identify the communities and ecosystems that are most vulnerable and specify how these ecosystems can best adapt to climate variations and change, (b) cyber-innovation for hydrologic science/engineering with predictive modeling under uncertainty by means of state-of-the-art remote sensing, data assimilation and machine learning.
Nonstationarity in hydroclimatic extremes caused by anthropogenic climate warming has increased the likelihood of extreme events which imposes considerable challenges for hydrometeorologists and practitioners in hazard modeling and management. I will present two tails of extreme events including floods and droughts while addressing socio-economic characteristics of such events, vulnerability, risk and resilience that are necessary to account for damages to economy and casualties from hydroclimatic natural hazards.