DATE/TIME: Thursday, March 30, 2023, 12:00 pm
Valentina Prigiobbe
Stevens Institute of Technology
Climate change and aging infrastructure in urban hydrology
Sea-level rise and intense precipitation pose significant threat to the livability in urban areas along coasts and river estuaries. In combination with shallow aquifers and aging sewer systems, the exacerbate the vulnerability of urban centers to small magnitude but more frequent inundation events, such as urban flooding. Urban flooding, although nondestructive, is a phenomenon that can cause infrastructure degradation and increase public exposure to unsanitized water, leading to public health crises. Despite of these potential negative effects on livability, it is still understudied and there are no tools to predict its evolution and identify the communities that are vulnerable to its negative impact. In this presentation, Dr. Prigiobbe will introduce her interdisciplinary research and talk about her work focused on building a holistic framework to predict urban flooding in vulnerable communities, including: 1) the modeling of coastal urban aquifer and sewer networks and their interaction; 2) the quantification of the interaction; and 3) the identification of the sewer most susceptible to such an interaction. The talk will close with the outline of her future research vision interconnected with teaching to build an interdisciplinary and innovative research program centered on urban hydrology for more resilient and sustainable urban areas in a changing climate.
Seminar Host:
AJ Both