Amir AghaKouchak

The 2026 Plinius Medal is awarded to Amir AghaKouchak for outstanding interdisciplinary contributions to understanding and mitigating Anthropogenic Drought, hydrologic extremes, and compound hazards.

Amir AghaKouchak is Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine, in the United States, and Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health in Hamilton, Canada. AghaKouchak‘s research is highly interdisciplinary and crosses the boundaries between hydrology, climatology, statistics and remote sensing to address critical global water resource issues. His long-term research objective is to utilise continuously growing satellite data along with ground-based observations to develop/improve integrated drought, flood and landslide modelling, prediction, and decision support systems. AghaKouchak is one of the most creative and productive researchers in his field. He introduced the concept of 'Anthropogenic Drought', describing droughts caused by human activities. He and his group developed the first multivariate multi-index drought monitoring approach, the 'Multivariate Standardized Drought Indicator', which integrates several types of data for composite drought assessment. They have also been pioneering in the field of compound hazards, developing a novel multivariate framework for evaluating compound hazard risks, and showing that traditional flood risk assessments underestimate coastal flooding risks by not considering combined effects of ocean and terrestrial flooding. All of this work and other innovative work by AghaKouchak is characterised by a strong interdisciplinary drive.

AghaKouchak is committed to ensuring that his work is used to mitigate the risk from natural hazards. His compound flood assessment framework has been integrated into the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 'Manual of Practice on Designing Climate-Resilient Infrastructure' for the mitigation of infrastructure risks from coastal floods. AghaKouchak also developed numerous tools that are used in practice, such as the 'Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System (GIDMaPS)', which provides meteorological and agricultural drought information based on multiple satellite and model-based precipitation and soil moisture datasets. He and his team received the 2022 Norman Medal, honouring their contribution of a novel framework to mitigate the hazards that climate change adjusted flood patterns pose for levees. AghaKouchak has a prolific publication record of more than 270 peer-reviewed papers, most with his students, PhD candidates or postdoctoral researchers as first authors, demonstrating his dedication to mentoring a new generation of scientists.

In summary AghaKouchak has, through his scientific excellence, high-impact and cross-cutting interdisciplinary research, and dedication to mentoring and scientific service, made exceptional contributions to understanding and mitigating Anthropogenic Drought, hydrologic extremes, and compound hazards, making him eminently worthy of receiving the 2026 Plinius Medal.