NH
Natural Hazards

Hydrology

From compound extremes to risk perception: conversations with the EGU Natural Hazards Division 2023 Early Career Scientist Award Winner

June 19, 2023
From compound extremes to risk perception: conversations with the EGU Natural Hazards Division 2023 Early Career Scientist Award Winner

I am pleased to interview Professor Ankit Agarwal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He specialises in hydro-meteorological (compound) extremes and complex networks and has been awarded the prestigious 2023 NH Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist award. Thank you, Ankit, for your time and for talking with us about your field of research.   1. Can you tell us more about y ...[Read More]

The new President-elect of the EGU Natural Hazards Division: a talk with Heidi Kreibich

May 30, 2022
Riverine flood

In today’s interview, we have the pleasure of talking with Dr Heidi Kreibich, lecturer at the Geography Department at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and head of the working group “Flood risk and climate adaptation” at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). From her interest in investigating different types of flooding associated with complex physical and anthropogenic ...[Read More]

Define and assess drought, the herculean challenge!

November 29, 2021
Define and assess drought, the herculean challenge!

The frequency and intensity of drought periods have increased since the 1950s over most land areas [1]. In fact, between 1998 and 2017, drought was the sixth natural hazard associated with disasters (4.8% of the total number of disasters) but the second in terms of the total number of affected people (33% of the total number of affected people), causing more than 21,000 deaths [2]. For example, in ...[Read More]

Tackling the leaks in the transport network with Maria Pregnolato

April 6, 2021
Tackling the leaks in the transport network with Maria Pregnolato

Transport networks are crucial to our lives, from commuting to work to reach health care facilities, from the transport of goods to leisure travelling. To quote Robin Chase, an American transport entrepreneur: “Transportation is […] the glue of our daily lives. When it goes well, we don’t see it. When it goes wrong, it negatively colours our day, makes us feel angry and impotent, curta ...[Read More]

Floods in the Anthropocene: the good, the bad and the ugly

March 22, 2021
Floods in the Anthropocene: the good, the bad and the ugly

The interplay between human societies and floods dates back to Old World civilizations. Floodplains have provided the potential for prosperous agriculture and for the development of organised communities and urban cultures. Contextually, flood events have caused millions of fatalities and invaluable economic losses throughout history. Over the past decades, human activities have increasingly alter ...[Read More]

Climate Change: is Viticulture under threat?

December 21, 2020
Climate Change: is Viticulture under threat?

In the afternoon of August 29, 2020, an intense supercell, which is a thunderstorm characterized by the presence of a deep, persistently rotating updraft, affected the province of Verona in the north of Italy (Figure 1). It was not the first event of this kind; several other events, including tornado episodes, had already occurred during summer 2020. Here the video of the downburst recorded during ...[Read More]

Anthropogenic changes of the landscape and natural hazards

March 6, 2019
Anthropogenic changes of the landscape and natural hazards

In this post, I had the pleasure to interview Paolo Tarolli, a very active member of the EGU community and a brilliant scientist. He is Professor in Water Resources Management and Integrated Watershed Management, and head of Earth Surface Processes and Society research group at the Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy). He has a PhD in Environmental Watershed Management and Geomatics and has wo ...[Read More]

Job matchmaking in the water sector

February 18, 2019
Job matchmaking in the water sector

Sooner or later in your career, you have turned lunch breaks, entire weekends or nights into a job search. Looking for a job can be like dating: it can either be an easy going match, quickly finding the right job position for you, or it might be a long and unsatisfying search over millions of websites. The climax arises if you want to use your past research expertise into something new, a multidis ...[Read More]

Heavy metals in industrial wastewater: hazardous waste or secondary resource?

August 13, 2018

Not long ago on the blog, we have talked about natural groundwater quality triggered by geogenic factors and related hazards such as a high concentration of heavy metals. Today’s topic concerns the anthropogenic input of heavy metals into the water and how to tackle its effects efficiently.   Industrial processes can lead to heavy metal-bearing wastewater, which is commonly treated by ineffi ...[Read More]

Natural Groundwater Quality: an underestimated and yet dangerous hazard.

May 21, 2018
Natural Groundwater Quality: an underestimated and yet dangerous hazard.

Today I have the pleasure to interview Dr. Evangelos Tziritis, a brilliant scientist and a friend. He will talk to us about Natural groundwater quality hazard and its implications. This blog aim is to discuss Natural Hazards. Therefore, today we will focus on the natural component of water quality, disregarding anthropogenic sources.  Evangelos is a Research Scientist at the Soil and Water Resourc ...[Read More]