Professor Bates, from the University’s School of Geographical Sciences, is a hydrologist by background but has widespread research interests in risk, resilience, uncertainty, governance and decision-making in relation to natural hazards and global water issues. To date he has published over one hundred international journal papers. His current work is funded by NERC, the EU, AHRC and the Willis Research Network. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of River Basin Management and a member of the Science Team in the forthcoming $600-million NASA/CNES Surface Water Ocean Topography satellite mission.

The Cabot Institute brings together some of Bristol’s most outstanding research in natural hazards and risk, Bayesian statistics, uncertainty and decision-making, climate modelling, poverty, global insecurities and governance, and systems engineering.