My research focuses on High-Impact-Low-Probability (HILP) floods, rare but devastating events, like the July 2021 floods in Central Europe. These unprecedented climate extremes are becoming more likely due to climate change, while our society grows more interdependent increasing vulnerabilities and knock-on impacts to areas not directly affected. Despite the growing risk posed by HILP floods, the processes behind them remain poorly understood. My research aims to fill this gap, while improving regional flood preparedness through robust HILP flood risk assessments.
Research topic explained
Based on state-of-the-art literature I will provide a guide on HILP flood stress tests, outlining methods used to assess impacts across different sectors. This will expose gaps in the research and help develop novel stress test frameworks. These enhanced methods will be applied to regional case studies, like the Roer river catchment.
As part of a systematic review, I applied a SCOPUS keyword search and a large-language-model assisted filtering methods to find relevant HILP flood stress tests. Additionally, 1323 studies were reviewed manually, leaving 138 studies for final consideration. These studies are categorized according to their objectives and their approaches to modeling the trigger, pathway, and impacts. Applying this knowledge in practice, I am participating in the Roer river stress test, by applying a regional weather generator and a mesoscale hydrological model. The stress test includes several extreme flood scenarios, similar to the July 2021 floods.