Partner 4: ULANC

Lancaster University (ULANC), UK, was established in 1964 and has developed an excellent reputation as one of the top research-led institutions in the UK. The Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) combines the expertise of the University and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and is one of the largest groupings of environmental scientists in Europe.   Within LEC, the Catchment and Aquatic Science group has a long record of research into hydrological and hydraulic modelling, flood forecasting, and uncertainty estimation.   This research is led by Professor Keith Beven who, in collaboration with Prof. Peter Young, developed and implemented an adaptive flood forecasting system, with uncertainty estimation, for the town of Dumfries (Scotland) in 1991.   Professor Beven from ULANC has also led the uncertainty estimation component of the FP5 European Flood Forecasting System project, with an application to the Meuse, currently leads the Risk and Uncertainty work package of the UK Flood Risk Management Research Consortium, and is one of the UK representatives on the COST731 Management Committee.  Recent work has looked at flood forecasting and modelling flood inundation in the Severn, Eden and Ribble systems with the UK Environment Agency and Alzette River in Luxembourg.

Prof. Keith Beven is Professor of Hydrology and Fluid Dynamics at Lancaster University where he has worked since 1985.  He previously held posts at the Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford, and the Universities of Leeds and Virigina.  While at Lancaster he has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara; EPFL, Lausanne; KU Leuven; and Uppsala University where in 2006/7 he was the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden Professor in Environmental Research. He is the author of the hydrological model TOPMODEL, the GLUE uncertainty estimation methodology, and texts on Rainfall-Runoff Modelling (2001) and Uncertainty in Environmental Modelling (to appear in 2008). He has published over 300 scientific papers and has several international awards, including the John Dalton Medal of EGU; Fellow, Horton and Langbein Awards of AGU. He has the highest citation H-index of any hydrologist.

Dr Paul Smith obtained his PhD at Lancaster University in 2006.  He had previously gained a BSc in Environmental Mathematics and worked in industry at the Water Research Centre in Swindon.  He has since held post-doctoral positions at Lancaster working on pervasive sensor networks for flood forecasting and the calibration of hydraulic flood routing models.

Selected Publications
2005.    Pappenberger, F., K. Beven, M. Horritt, and S. Blazkova, 2005a: Uncertainty in the calibration of effective roughness parameters in HEC-RAS using inundation and downstream level observations. Journal of Hydrology, 302, 46-69.
2005.    Pappenberger, F., K. Beven, N. Hunter, P. Bates, B. Gouweleeuw, J. Thielen, and A. de Roo, 2005b: Cascading model uncertainty from medium range weather forecasts (10 days) through a rainfall-runoff model to flood inundation predictions within the European Flood Forecasting System (EFFS). Hydrology and Earth System Sciences - HESS, 9, 381-393.
2005.    Beven, K., R. Romanowicz, F. Pappenberger, P. C. Young, and M. Werner, 2005: The Uncertainty Cascade in Flood Forecasting. In: Proceedings of Innovation, Advances and Implementation of Flood Forecasting Technology, ACTIF meeting, Tromsø, Norway, S4-1.
2006.    Romanowicz, R. J., P. C. Young, and K. J. Beven, 2006: Data assimilation and adaptive forecasting of water levels in the river Severn catchment, United Kingdom. Water Resources Research, 42, 1-12.
2007.    Pappenberger, F., K. Frodsham, K. Beven, R. Romanowicz, and P. Matgen, 2007b: Fuzzy set approach to calibrating distributed flood inundation models using remote sensing observations. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences J1  - HESS, 11, 739-752.
2007.    Pappenberger, F., K. Frodsham, K. Beven, R. Romanowicz, and P. Matgen, 2007b: Fuzzy set approach to calibrating distributed flood inundation models using remote sensing observations. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences J1  - HESS, 11, 739-752.
2007.    Beven, K., 2007: Towards integrated environmental models of everywhere: uncertainty, data and modelling as a learning process. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences J1  - HESS, 11, 460-467.
2007.    Faulkner, H., D. Parker, C. Green, and K. Beven, 2007: Developing a translational discourse to communicate uncertainty in flood risk between science and the practitioner. Ambio, 16, 692-703.
2007.    Wilby, R. L., K. J. Beven, and N. S. Reynard, 2007: Climate change and fluvial flood risk in the UK: more of the same? Hydrological Processes, Online.