Southeast Asia focus
PREDICTING THE COMPOUND EFFECT Flooding is a constant threat in parts of Southeast Asia. The combination of tropical cyclones, heavy monsoon rainfall and rising sea levels adds up to potential disaster for people living on low-lying coastlines and deltas. A group of Southampton researchers is behind a project to better understand the flood hazard from tropical cyclone-induced storm surges for coastlines around the South China Sea, and how projected future climate change will alter this risk. The project is called Comp-Flood (Compound flooding in coastal Vietnam). It began in 2019 under the leadership of Dr Ivan Haigh, Associate Professor in Coastal
A map of the ground elevations for the Mekong region
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Oceanography, with Robert Marsh, Professor in Oceanography and Climate, Steve Darby, Professor in Physical Geography, and Robert Nicholls, Professor in Coastal Engineering. Ivan explained: “The aim of Comp-Flood is to predict the impact of compound flooding, when combinations of flooding happen at the same time or in quick succession, which is always pretty disastrous. It’s a real risk along the Vietnam coastline and the Mekong Delta,
where they endure typhoon weather and see lots of rain coming at the same time as storm surges. We have used a statistical approach to try and generate likely scenarios from actual activity.” The group has used a huge dataset of potential future tropical cyclone activity in this region to simulate how the coast could be inundated over the next 30 years. The dataset was created from a record of historic global
