event
Friday 02 Nov 2018: Flood Impacts on Road Transportation
Katya Pyatkova - University of Exeter
Harrison 170 13:30-14:30
Abstract:
Katya Pyatkova will be talking about Flood Impacts on Road Transportation and will take you on a flooded journey from point A to point B. This journey may require you to change your route or may delay you because of congested traffic en route. Flooding and transportation are two seemingly remote areas of science but their integration can reveal how inundation can affect individual vehicles and the whole transport system. As flooding has the potential to disrupt large geographical areas for long periods, the transport system may suffer substantial capacity reductions. Network capacity is crucial in transport systems, but constraints can be alleviated through strategies for more informed operations. The research focuses on intervention measures that improve the transport system performance, rather than protecting the infrastructure. Once the interventions are implemented in the transport system, its resilience is evaluated as a performance-based characteristic.
Biography:
Katya Pyatkova is a Bulgarian national that has always been fascinated by flooding. Her only flood experience left her very thirsty on a stranded train for hours. Years after that she won an Erasmus Mundus MSc scholarship of the Flood Risk Management programme, led by IHE Delft, the Netherlands. That scholarship took her on a flood risk journey in five countries – Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia and Denmark. Working for DHI Denmark, she analysed how climate change affects flooding in the second-largest city, Aarhus. Being part of a leading water research consultancy inspired her to continue further her education, and she started a PhD in the University of Exeter. Her research ventured into the relatively unknown area of flood impacts on road transportation. She developed an open-source software tool that integrates flood and transport model with the hope that this tool can promote popularising a marginalised area of science.
