On March 11th, at 12:00 AM, a seminar titled “Exploiting computational models for (near) real-time landslide risk assessment” will take place in Room Grandori (Building 4 – Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32 – Milan).
The seminar will be conducted by Dr. sc. Anil Yildiz (Methods for Model-based Development in Computational Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany).

Abstract

Risks due to single catastrophic landslide events or spatially concentrated shallow landslides on ecosystem, infrastructure and human lives are increasing with higher number of events whether due to climate change or other anthropogenic activities. Model-based decision support in landslide risk assessment benefits from the high predictivity of complex computational models to provide decisions with less uncertainty and more reliability. While such models with high computational demand can be used in the production of susceptibility or hazard maps, incorporation into near real-time applications, such as early warning systems or automatically updated hazard maps, is still a challenge. Replacing the computationally expensive model with a relatively cheap-to-built and nearly instantaneously predicting surrogate model is one solution of using complex models of geohazards in decision support. A strategy to exploit computational models for real-time landslide risk assessment will be presented in this talk with examples such as uncertainty quantification and parameter estimation.

Speaker’s bio

Anil Yildiz is a senior research and deputy director of the Chair of Methods of Model-based Development in Computational Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and he is leading the research group Engineering Climate Change Response. He earned his BSc. and MSc. degrees in Civil Engineering at Bogazici University, and obtained his Dr. sc. in Civil Engineering from ETH Zurich in 2018. He has been awarded the Culmann Prize 2019 for an outstanding thesis on the quantification of biological effects on soil stability. His research focusses mainly on geohazards, covering a wide range of topics, such as shallow landslides, root reinforcement, soil-plant-atmosphere interactions, and methods, such as complex laboratory and field testing as well as computational and surrogate modelling.