SYNOPSIS

1. Background to the FIAS UK – Malaysia Collaboration
2. The impact of projected climate change on river flow: UK and Malaysia
3. Assessing flood risk management in UK and Malaysia
4. Nature based solutions for flood mitigations. UK experiences
5. Way forward for catchment-scale hydrological modelling in Malaysia
6. Final Discussion.


BIODATA OF SPEAKERS

(1) Dr. Balqis Mohamed Rehan    

•  BEng. (Hons) Civil Engineering,
   Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia (Graduated in 2007)
•  MEng. (Hons) Environmental Engineering,
   Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Graduated in 2009)
•  DPhil. in Geography and the Environment
   (Title: Flood risk management in the context of climatic variability and change)
   University of Oxford, UK (Graduated in 2016)

Short bio:
Dr. Balqis is a senior lecturer of hydrology and water resources engineering with the Department of Civil Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She is the principal investigator for the NERC-Newton funded research project on Flood risk assessment across Peninsular Malaysia and has been actively involved in other research projects. She also contributes to flood-related consultancy projects in Malaysia, including leading a research project on the cost-effectiveness of property-level flood risk reduction measures.


(2)  Dr. Vicky Bell

•  BSc. (Hons) in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
    University of St. Andrews, UK (graduated in 1988)
•  PhD in applied Maths (Title: Thin film flows with evaporation)
    University of St. Andrews, UK (graduated in 1991)

Short bio:
Dr Vicky Bell is a principal hydrological modeller and head of the Hydrological Processes and Extremes group at UKCEH, with ~30 years research experience. Vicky has specialised in the development of spatially-distributed hydrological models and models of hydro-ecological systems as affected by natural hazards. Significant developments include the Grid-to-Grid (G2G) hydrological model and its application to investigate the potential impacts of climate change on river flows across Britain, and the LTLS national-scale freshwater nutrient model. Vicky recently co-led the NERC/UKRI-funded Newton project Flood Impacts Across Scales (FIAS), and leads the new NERC-funded freshwaters project “Long Term Large Scale – Freshwater Ecology”.


(3)  Dr Ing Paul Sayers

•  BEng (Hons) in Civil engineering, University of Brighton (1996)
•  PhD in flood risk management (Title: Strategic Flood Management - A systems-based approach)
   TU/IHE Delft, Netherlands

Short bio:
Dr. Paul is a Chartered Engineer and holds a PhD in flood risk management from the TU Delft. In recent years he led the future flood projections for the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and several regional strategic risk studies across Asia and Africa. Current activities include contributing to the first EU climate risk assessment and development of the 3rd generation national risk assessment for England. He is the technical lead at Sayers and Partners Limited (a leading applied research consultancy) and a visiting researcher at Tyndall Climate Centre, University of East Anglia and a fellow of the ODI.


(4)    Dr. Rameshwaran Ponnambalam

•  BSc (Hons) Civil and Structural Engineering
   University of Bradford, UK (Graduated in 1992)
•  MPhil in Numerical Simulation of Particle Settling in Newtonian and Non-Newtonian Fluids
   University of Wales, UK (Graduated in 1993)
•  PhD (Title: Conveyance Prediction for Meandering Two-Stage Channel Flows)
   University of Aberdeen, UK (Graduated in 1997)

Short bio:
Dr Ponnambalam Rameshwaran (Ramesh) is a research scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) whose research focuses on hydraulic and hydrological models at reach, national and continental scales. His work involves developing new equations, ways of representing natural and human-created artificial phenomena within hydraulic river models and incorporating human anthropogenic impacts and climate scenarios within hydrological models. He also undertakes physical model experiments and field monitoring using state-of-the-art instrumentation.


(5)    Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zed Diyana Zulkafli

• Bs. Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, USA (graduated 2007)
• Ms. Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, USA (graduated 2007)
• PhD. Hydrology, Imperial College London, UK (graduated 2014)

Short bio:
Dr Zed Diyana Zulkafli is an associate professor of hydrology and water resources with the Department of Civil Engineering at UPM. Her research focuses on building models for understanding the roles of the weather and climate on water availability and hazards. She is a keen proponent of public domain models and datasets, as well as transparent and reproducible scientific methods and workflows. Her approaches are transdisciplinary as she finds these to be the most challenging and satisfying.