Roger Falconer, IAHR Former President

Roger Falconer
Expertise

Roger Falconer is CH2M HILL Professor of Water Management, Director of the Hydro-environmental Research Centre and Past Leader of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability, in the School of Engineering, at Cardiff University. He is also President of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research and advisor to companies and government departments etc. on a range of issues relating to: hydro-environmental impact assessment studies, flood risk management and marine renewable energy devices and structures.

Qualifications

BSc(Eng), Civil Engineering, 1973.  MSCE, Hydraulic Engineering, 1974.  PhD, Computational Hydraulics, 1976. DEng, 1992, DSc(Eng) 1994, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, 1997, Fellow of City and Guilds 1997, Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales 2011, CEng, CEnv, C.WEM, EurIng, FICE, FCIWEM, FASCE.

Career summary

Research

The Hydro-environmental Research Centre at Cardiff University is led by Professor Falconer and is a multi-disciplinary research centre consisting of 10 academic staff and currently 8 research fellows and 30 research students.  The HRC includes a large, well equipped Hydraulics Laboratory, with a coastal basin facility and a large re-circulating tidal flume.  The Centre has attracted over ￡9.2M in total project value to Cardiff since its formation in 1997, including sponsorship from: EPSRC, NERC, CH2M HILL, Arup, Hyder, Corus, etc., and is regarded as one of the UK’s leading research centre’s in the field. The research emphasis is on the development, refinement and application of computational hydro-environmental models for predicting hydrodynamic, water quality, sediment and contaminant transport processes in watershed systems, from catchment to coast, including transport through groundwater, river, estuarine and coastal basins. The Centre works closely with other universities, government agencies and industry in acquiring field data to develop and refine its models, including, for example, the Centre for Research into Environment and Health (Aberystwyth) and the Environment Agency in the UK; the Centre for Water Research (U. of Western Australia) and Tsinghua University (China) internationally etc.    

Typical personal deliverables include:

·        400 scientific papers; over 175 in academic journals, over 2000 citations and a h-index of 28

·        Chair of REF2014 Sub-Panel 14 for Civil and Construction Engineering

·        Member of Scientific Advisory Committee for over 100 conferences, including: Hydro-Epedimiology, Arizona (2007), Environmental Hydraulics, Greece (2010), Hydoinformatics, China (2010), Eco-hydraulics, Korea (2010), IAHR European Congress, Edinburgh (2010).

·        Member of Department of Energy and Climate Change Expert Panel for Severn Tidal Power Studies Project.

·        Member of Global Water Security Steering Group (Reporting to Government Chief Scientist)

Typical current and recent research projects include:

·         Modelling impact of bridges and debris on flood inundation extent in steep river basins – analysing incipient velocity of cars in flooded rivers and evaluating the impact of partially blocked bridges on the flood inundation extent in rivers (funded by EPSRC FRMRC Phase2).

·         Hydro-environmental impact of marine renewable energy devices and structures on coastal and estuarine waters – investigating impact of barrages, lagoons and tidal turbines on hydrodynamic, water quality and morphological processes in coastal waters (funded by EU).

·         Modelling tracer transport in groundwater riverine systems – laboratory studies and computational hydraulics development to predict tracer transport and diffusion through groundwater systems, interacting with tidally affected riverine systems (funded by NERC studentship).

·         Centre for Doctoral Training in Water Informatics: Science and Engineering – in collaboration with the universities of Bath, Bristol and Exeter, where 16 PhD students are funded for 8 years on research projects relating to water modelling of flow, water quality and sediment transport processes at Cardiff (funded by EPSRC and various companies).  

Selected publications