PhD student:
Katherine Booker (UoW)
Supervisors:
Iain White (UoW)
Matthew Wilson (GRI – UoC)
Dr. Xinyu Fu (UoW)
Funding:
MBIE Endeavour Research Programme – Increasing flood resilience across Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Duration of Project
PhD May 2023 – May 2026 (3 years)
Summary:
The devastating impact of flood events around the globe demonstrates the need for more comprehensive assessments of future flood risk in urban policy. In Aotearoa-New Zealand, flooding is one of the costliest natural hazards, in part due to the relatively high clean-up costs, but mostly due to the frequency of flood events. With a warming climate, changing precipitation trends, and rising sea levels, flooding is expected to become more frequent and more severe in the future. Flood risk assessments based on future flood projections paired with current urban plans are missing a key characteristic of the hazard – what will urban areas in Aotearoa-NZ look like in 2050 or 2100? With a continually growing and urbanising population we are facing a housing crisis, we must build houses. How might flood risk change over the next 100 years due to changes in urban landscapes? This PhD research project seeks to explore, test and develop methods to generate a range of alternative long-term urban development scenarios. The goal is to create a robust methodology for generating and then integrating urban futures with flood futures to provide a more comprehensive assessment of the uncertainties and inequalities of future flood risk.
Outputs:
Booker, K., White, I. and Wilson, M. Water Allocation and the Canterbury Land and Water Regional Plan. The Fourth Spatial Data Science Symposium. UoC, Christchurch, September 5, 2023. Poster.
Booker, K., White, I. and Wilson, M. Building Future Urban Development Scenarios into Assessments of Future Flood Risk. The Fourth Spatial Data Science Symposium. UoC, Christchurch, September 5, 2023. Poster.
