Emanuele Bevacqua

NH Natural Hazards

The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Emanuele Bevacqua for the poster/PICO entitled:

Changing risk of compound flooding over Europe under anthropogenic climate change (Bevacqua, E.; Maraun, D.; Vousdoukas, M. I.; Voukouvalas, E.; Vrac, M.; Mentaschi, L.; Widmann, M.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Emanuele is trained as a physicist and has conducted his PhD research within the project CE:LLO at University of Graz (Austria) and at GEOMAR – Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany). He has focussed his scientific research on multivariate statistical modeling and the analysis of compound events, i.e. major extreme impacts that result from the joint occurrence of underlying contributing events. During his PhD, based on pair-copula constructions, he developed a multivariate statistical model for compound events. Based on this model, both soil moisture drought and compound flooding (CF) were studied. CF is an extreme event taking place in low-lying coastal areas as a result of co-occurring high sea level and large amounts of runoff, caused by precipitation.
In the poster, the CF probability along the European coasts both for present and future climate is estimated according to the business-as-usual (RCP8.5) scenario. Under current climate conditions, the locations experiencing the highest probability are mostly located along the Mediterranean Sea. However, future climate projections show emerging high probability along parts of the Atlantic coast and the North Sea. The increase of the probability is mostly driven by an intensification of precipitation extremes. Thus, the poster highlights that in several European regions, CF should be considered as a potential hazard aggravating the risk caused by mean sea level rise in the future.