Compound events receive increasing attention in recent years with the aim of better understanding how climate variables combine to produce extreme impacts. Actually, many disastrous floods are compound events, where multiple sources of flooding overlap or interact in such a way that the flood impact is aggravated.

This doctoral research aims at developing a novel approach for assessing the risks of compound pluvial and river flooding for both current and future periods. It will contribute to close the knowledge gap, existing in the scientific literature, on this type of compound events.

The research plan foresees 4 steps, building on existing tools in the section Hydrology: (1) Develop a model chain for the integrated simulation of both pluvial and fluvial flooding. (2) Develop a weather generator which is able to provide large-scale weather fields and high-resolution weather fields for urban areas. (3) Test the proposed model scheme and compare the integrated risk assessment of compound pluvial and river flooding to the independent assessment. (4) Quantify the risk of compound flooding for current and future periods.

The research is funded by CSC (China Scholarship Council).