ENAC Seminar Series by Prof. Davide Wüthrich
Event details
| Date | 16.03.2023 |
| Hour | 16:00 › 17:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Davide Wüthrich |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
16:00 – 17:00 – Prof. Davide Wüthrich
Assistant Professor, TU Delft, NL
SURVIVING NATURAL DISASTERS - What can we learn from previous floods?
The world is changing, not only its climate! Most recent studies agree that the future will experience more frequent and severe hazards, including extreme floods, droughts, storms and tsunamis. The summer 2021 floods in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands proved once again the catastrophic nature of these events, that can no longer be considered too rare to be relevant and actions must be undertaken to guarantee safety, mitigate damage and reduce reconstruction costs. Also in Switzerland, a report from the Federal Council showed that increasing temperatures will lead to more violent and unpredictable storms, harmful not only to people, but also to critical infrastructure. In addition, a warmer climate will favour the melting of mountain glaciers, generating supplementary resources for the achievement of the Energy Strategy 2050. These will be associated with increasing pressure on our ageing hydraulic infrastructure, with potential damages to both people and the environment.
In this context, today’s race toward a safer and more sustainable adaptation to climate change questions the classical hydraulic design, requiring a paradigm shift toward a multi-hazard approach with transdisciplinary solutions and mitigation measures based on resilient green-blue infrastructure. Based on observations during a recent post-flood forensic survey in the Ahr Valley (Germany), this seminar initially focuses on the consequences of highly unsteady flows on infrastructure, showing that a more comprehensive understanding of these phenomena and their driving mechanism is essential to develop innovative solutions to improve design guidelines. Secondly, this seminar presents additional challenges associated with extreme floods, including stability of people, air-entrainment, the effect of debris accumulation and associated structural loading. This reveals that a combination of innovative research, quality education and interdisciplinary collaborations is the only approach to successfully overcome the challenges that current and future infrastructures are facing.
Short bio:
Davide Wüthrich is a civil engineer specialized in hydraulic structures, currently Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands and Honorary Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia. After obtaining a Bachelor degree at Politecnico di Torino (Italy), he continued his studies at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he obtained a Master in 2013 and a Ph.D in 2018 on the impact of waves on structures. He was a visiting Post-Doc for 3 months at JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) and he was awarded a SNSF Post-Doctoral fellowship to conduct research at the University of Queensland (Australia) on the air-entrainment in transient bores. In December 2020 he joined TU Delft, where his current research interests focus on the impact of highly unsteady flows on critical infrastructure, including post-flood forensic surveys, laboratory experiments and prototype measurements. Throughout his career he has been involved in many projects in the domain of hydraulic and coastal engineering, co-authoring more than 25 journal publications and receiving multiple international recognitions, including the 2018 Best Paper award in Coastal Engineering Journal (CEJ) and the 2019 Jean Valembois Fluid Mechanics award.
Assistant Professor, TU Delft, NL
SURVIVING NATURAL DISASTERS - What can we learn from previous floods?
The world is changing, not only its climate! Most recent studies agree that the future will experience more frequent and severe hazards, including extreme floods, droughts, storms and tsunamis. The summer 2021 floods in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands proved once again the catastrophic nature of these events, that can no longer be considered too rare to be relevant and actions must be undertaken to guarantee safety, mitigate damage and reduce reconstruction costs. Also in Switzerland, a report from the Federal Council showed that increasing temperatures will lead to more violent and unpredictable storms, harmful not only to people, but also to critical infrastructure. In addition, a warmer climate will favour the melting of mountain glaciers, generating supplementary resources for the achievement of the Energy Strategy 2050. These will be associated with increasing pressure on our ageing hydraulic infrastructure, with potential damages to both people and the environment.
In this context, today’s race toward a safer and more sustainable adaptation to climate change questions the classical hydraulic design, requiring a paradigm shift toward a multi-hazard approach with transdisciplinary solutions and mitigation measures based on resilient green-blue infrastructure. Based on observations during a recent post-flood forensic survey in the Ahr Valley (Germany), this seminar initially focuses on the consequences of highly unsteady flows on infrastructure, showing that a more comprehensive understanding of these phenomena and their driving mechanism is essential to develop innovative solutions to improve design guidelines. Secondly, this seminar presents additional challenges associated with extreme floods, including stability of people, air-entrainment, the effect of debris accumulation and associated structural loading. This reveals that a combination of innovative research, quality education and interdisciplinary collaborations is the only approach to successfully overcome the challenges that current and future infrastructures are facing.
Short bio:
Davide Wüthrich is a civil engineer specialized in hydraulic structures, currently Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands and Honorary Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia. After obtaining a Bachelor degree at Politecnico di Torino (Italy), he continued his studies at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he obtained a Master in 2013 and a Ph.D in 2018 on the impact of waves on structures. He was a visiting Post-Doc for 3 months at JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) and he was awarded a SNSF Post-Doctoral fellowship to conduct research at the University of Queensland (Australia) on the air-entrainment in transient bores. In December 2020 he joined TU Delft, where his current research interests focus on the impact of highly unsteady flows on critical infrastructure, including post-flood forensic surveys, laboratory experiments and prototype measurements. Throughout his career he has been involved in many projects in the domain of hydraulic and coastal engineering, co-authoring more than 25 journal publications and receiving multiple international recognitions, including the 2018 Best Paper award in Coastal Engineering Journal (CEJ) and the 2019 Jean Valembois Fluid Mechanics award.
Practical information
- General public
- Invitation required
- This event is internal
Organizer
- ENAC
Contact
- Cristina Perez