Professor Paul Bates
CBE, B.Sc.(Soton), Ph.D.(Bristol), FRS
Expertise
Paul Bates is an expert in the science of flooding. He develops simulations models and combines these with satellite and airborne data to advance fundamental understanding and reduce threats to life and economic losses worldwide.
Current positions
Professor of Hydrology
School of Geographical Sciences
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
Paul is a hydrologist by background, a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the American Geophysical Union, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder and in 2019 was awarded a CBE for services to flood risk management. He is also Chairman of the flood risk analytics company Fathom (www.fathom.global).
He has widespread research interests in risk, resilience, uncertainty, governance and decision-making in relation to natural hazards and global water issues. He is a double recipient of the Lloyd's of London Science of Risk prize and in 2015 he was awarded a 50th Anivversary Prize for Economic Impact by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council. He has published over 230 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and these were cited over 2000 times in 2020 according to the ISI Web of Knowledge. He currently has an ISI H-index of 77 (or 97 on Google Scholar). For a full publication list see here.
Paul's main science contribution has been to improve the prediction of flood inundation through the development of new computer models, the use of data from new airborne, satellite and ground sensors and through the better characterization of risk and uncertainty. For videos of Paul talking about his research see here and here.
He has held Visiting Scientist positions at Princeton University, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Laboratoire National d'Hydraulique, Paris, the EU Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He also undertakes significant International collaboration, including work with the French National Space Agency (CNES), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia in Brazil, as well as numerous universities in the US, Europe and Africa.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Uncertainty quantification algorithms for flood modelling
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Geographical SciencesDates
01/03/2024 to 28/02/2027
Climate change adaptation in infrastructure systems
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
PhD studentships focused on the investigation and development of new methodologies for:
1) Climate change adaptation in power systems considering interdependencies with transportation/urban infrastructure systems, led by Dr Laiz Souto, Department…Managing organisational unit
School of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical EngineeringDates
18/09/2023
Climate and Environmental Risk Analytics for Resilient Finance (CERAF)
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Geographical SciencesDates
01/04/2021 to 31/03/2024
Climate and Environmental Risk Analytics for Resilient Finance (CERAF)
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Geographical SciencesDates
01/04/2021 to 31/03/2024
Thesis supervisions
Exploring patterns of current and future residential flood risk in Great Britain
Supervisors
Development and assessment of dynamic storage cell codes for flood inundation modelling
Supervisors
Understanding flood risk at large spatial scales
Supervisors
Bayesian calibration of flood inundation simulators using an observation of flood extent
Supervisors
Hybrid geographical narratives
Supervisors
Improving flood hazard mapping using global flood model and machine learning techniques
Supervisors
Amazon River and floodplain hydrodynamics
Supervisors
Modelling water flow and chemical transport through floodplain systems
Supervisors
Publications
Selected publications
01/01/2010A simple inertial formulation of the shallow water equations for efficient two dimensional flood inundation modelling
Journal of Hydrology
A subgrid channel model for simulating river hydraulics and floodplain inundation over large and data sparse areas
Water Resources Research
Amazon flood wave hydraulics
Journal of Hydrology
Seasonal water storage on the Amazon floodplain measured from satellites
Remote Sensing of Environment
Applicability of the local inertial approximation of the shallow water equations to flood modelling
Water Resources Research
Recent publications
21/08/2024A 30 m global flood inundation model for any climate scenario
Water Resources Research
Creating sustainable capacity for river science in the Congo basin through the CRuHM project
Interface Focus
Current and future rainfall-driven flood risk from hurricanes in Puerto Rico under 1.5 and 2°C climate change
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Developing a Fluvial and Pluvial Stochastic Flood Model of Southeast Asia
Water Resources Research
Exploring the limits and gaps of flood adaptation
Nature Water