DAAD PhD scholar Tran Tuan Anh

Within this PhD projects the sediment properties and dynamics in the estuary of the Hau river are monitored and characterized, along with the hydraulics of the mixing zone of sea and fresh water. This forms the basis for an estimation of the importance of the sediment properties on the morphological development of the estuary and the coast of the Mekong delta, as well as the impact of expected changes in sediment load and properties in the near future.

Hmboldt Fellowship Dr. Poulomi Ganguli

The goal of this project is to assess the risk of compound flooding in the coastal catchment. Floods in the lower reaches of coastal environment can be caused by a confluence of river floods, together with rising tides and extreme storm surges. Floods due to the simultaneous occurrence of extremes often cause devastating consequences than either variable is extreme in isolation. Space and time scales and dependence between hydroclimatic variables make the study of compound events and their impacts conceptually challenging. We seek to develop a multivariate statistical framework, necessary to assess the risk of such low probability – high consequence events. We focus our analysis especially over Northwestern Europe as this area is largely affected by coastal and fluvial floods, yielding huge socio-economic impacts.