Climate Induced Hazards: Prospects for Modeling Multiple Hydroclimatic Attributes and Portfolio Risk

ABSTRACT

Modeling spatially correlated hydroclimatic extremes and the joint risk due to threshold exceedances in multiple places within a year is strategically important for estimating and underwriting continental scale portfolio risk. It is also essential to understand what drives total annual losses due to hydrologic extremes in a given year and their relation to climate conditions. These losses depend on the locations affected in the year. Large-scale climate patterns can influence where, how much, and how often the extreme event happens in a given year. The coincidence of many such events in a year across the country exemplifies compound risk, whose aggregate loss is of interest.

In this talk, I will attempt to address questions such as whether there is evidence of decadal organization of US flood risk and how one can use information on spatial dependence of hazard occurrence to assess portfolio performance. I will also present a stochastic modeling framework for simulating multiple floods across the continental US while preserving information on their co-occurrence to provide estimates of the probability of aggregate flood losses with its uncertainty. The large-scale ocean-atmosphere states that could drive these aggregate losses will be identified. The broader impact of this study is to provide tools that any country or region can use to assess the potential impact of spatially correlated risks of extreme events.

BIOGRAPHY

Naresh Devineni is a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at The City University of New York’s City College. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University. He did his post-doctoral studies at Columbia University. He also worked as a consultant for the World Bank for a brief period in 2009. He has diverse interests in hydro-climate modeling and extremes analysis, statistical and machine learning methods, water sustainability and risk assessment and water systems analysis. He is motivated by challenging problems interfacing human needs, engineering innovation and scientific advancement. More information can be found at https://nareshdevineni.com/about/.

Zoom Link: https://stevens.zoom.us/j/91634601626

To view the full list of seminar speakers for the Fall 2023 semester, visit the CEOE Seminars page.