HS
Hydrological Sciences

Emma Ford

Emma Ford is a final year PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, studying machine learning for large sample hydrology. Her research uses a data driven lens to investigate flood generating processes, while also examining the tools themselves, including machine learning and explainable artificial intelligence, and what they can and cannot tell us about flood systems.

What machine learning can and cannot tell us about floods

Collage based on a picture by Imad Clicks via Pexel

Floods are shaped by complex and nonlinear interactions between weather patterns, rainfall, soil properties, topography, land cover, and how wet a catchment already is. This complexity is one reason machine learning (ML) is increasingly used in hydrology. ML models can learn patterns from large and complex datasets with many variables.  Early in my PhD, while exploring machine learning models for ...[Read More]