We hope to see you this Friday at 12 PM, in Lloyd Hall 233, for our last WaterWorks of the semester. Dr. Hamed Moftakhari will speak and complementary lunch will be provided! (First come first serve, vegetarian options available)

Title: Challenges and Opportunities for Compound Coastal Hazard Modeling in a Changing Climate

Abstract: Modulated freshwater influx to low-lying coastal regions and altered coastal water level dynamics are expected in the following decades due to in-/direct impacts of human activities (i.e. emissions, urbanization and flood management). The resulting terrestrial and coastal hazard drivers synergize to produce compound floods through nonlinear interactions that yield a level of risk not expected from each driver in isolation. In this presentation, I review the challenges and opportunities for appropriate assessment and modeling of compound coastal floods. I will review the methods and tools for analyzing the extent to which non-stationarity in individual flooding drivers (rainfall, river flow and sea level) and in their inter-dependency affect the accuracy of design flood hazard estimates. This presentation highlights the need for a revised operational framework that takes into account time-variability in individual drivers and their statistical dependencies for a comprehensive coastal flood risk assessment.