On December 10th, Nancy Joy Lim at the Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development publicly defends her thesis on uncertainties and flood mapping, "Modelling, mapping and visualisation of flood inundation uncertainties" at the University of Gävle.
Flood maps showing extents of predicted flooding for a given extreme event have wide usage in all types of spatial planning tasks, as well as serving as information material for the public. However, the production processes that these maps undergo (including the different data, methods, models and decisions from the persons generating them), which include both Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and hydraulic modelling, affect the map’s content, and will be reflected in the final map. A crisp flood boundary, which is a common way of representing the boundary in flood maps, may therefore not be the best representation to be used. They provide a false implication that these maps are correct and that the flood extents are absolute, despite the effects of the entire modelling in the prediction output. Hence, this research attempts to determine how flood prediction outputs can be affected by uncertainties in the modelling process. In addition, it tries to evaluate how users understand, utilize and perceive flood uncertainty information.
The entire research contributes to the understanding of uncertainties in flood maps. Furthermore, investigating ways to effectively communicate flood uncertainty using different visualisation techniques, as well as assessing how users apprehend and perceive the information provided to them have been important parts of the results derived.
Date: December 10th, 2018
Time: 13:00-
Location: 12:108, Lilla Jadwigasalen
Opponent: Prof. Matthew Wilson, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Evaluation committee:
Prof. Lars Nyberg, Karlstad University, Sweden
Dr. Camilla Forsell, Linköping University, Sweden
Dr. Jerker Jarsjö, Stockholm University, Sweden
Prof. Mohammad Bagherbandi, University of Gavle (back-up member)
Chairman: Jonas Boustedt, Head of Department, University of Gavle
