Brett F. Sanders, Ph.D., EIT, F.EMI, F.EWRI, A.M.ASCE

Chancellor’s Professor
University of California Irvine

 

Abstract: Damage and disruption from flooding have rapidly escalated over recent decades. Knowing who and what is at risk, how these risks are changing, and what is driving these changes is of immense importance to flood management and policy. Furthermore, predictions of flood risk are critical to public safety. Robust methods for accurate predictions of flooding have been known for decades, grounded in shallow-water wave theory and computational methods for hyperbolic equations. However, many high-profile research studies reporting risks at national and global scales rely upon a significant oversimplification of how floods behave—as a level pool—an approach known as bathtub modeling that is avoided in flood management practice due to known biases (e.g., >200% error in flood area) compared to physics-based modeling.

With publicity by news media, findings that would likely not be trusted by flood management professionals are thus widely communicated to policy makers and the public, scientific credibility is put at risk, and maladaptation becomes more likely. This presentation will provide an overview of the mechanics and computational methods capable of robustly modeling floods, and document biases and uncertainties that may be introduced by reduced-physics approaches including bathtub models. We will also highlight the feasibility of physics-based flood simulation at regional, national and global scales.

Biosketch: Brett Sanders is a Chancellor’s Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Urban Planning and Public Policy at UC Irvine. He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S. and PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Michigan emphasizing environmental fluid mechanics and computational methods.

Dr. Sanders’ research seeks to promote improved understanding of and responses to flooding and erosion risks. His work addresses coastal, riverine, urban and mountain risks. He is the developer of the ParBreZo and PRIMo flood simulation models for compound risk assessment at local to regional scales, and his work has informed the practice of collaborative flood modeling for effective and equitable flood adaptation. Dr. Sanders focuses research on compound and interconnected climate risks, and he presently leads collaborative flood modeling projects in California and Florida.

Dr. Sanders is a Fellow in the Engineering Mechanics Institute of ASCE, a Fellow of the Environmental and Water Resources Institute of ASCE, Fellow of the Faculty Academy for Teaching Excellence, a Chapter Author for the 6th National Climate Assessment, a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Member of the Science Advisory Panel for the California Coastal Commission, and the recipient of numerous teaching awards at UCI. 

Find more information at his UCI Flood Lab website.