What Faculty do you work in?
Science and Engineering
What is your main area of research?
My research is centered around understanding coastal change and flood risk in a changing climate and translating that knowledge into developing nature-based solutions to support sustainable coastal management.
Why is your research important?
Coastal flooding will affect 15% of the global population and cost approximately £50 billion annually by 2050. Coastal erosion and flooding will rapidly increase towards the end of this century as a result of sea level rise and increasingly frequent extreme storms. Some coastal communities and infrastructure are likely to be unviable unless measures are taken to defend them against coastal flooding and erosion urgently. As the current approach for coastal flood mitigation involving hard, static structures is increasingly becoming unfit for the purpose, the urgency of implementing environmentally sustainable flood risk management strategies has been globally acknowledged. I am trying to understand complex natural interactions and feedbacks between hydrological, ecological and sediment transport processes in the coastal environment which are key ingredients to developing successful nature-based coastal defense solutions.
What SDG is your research most closely aligned with?
SDG11: Sustainable cities and communities
SDG13: Climate action
What do you hope to accomplish with your research?
Protecting people and the environment from coastal hazards in a changing climate is extremely challenging and costly. My goal is to establish scientific evidence required for developing sustainable coastal defense solutions with multiple environmental and societal benefits, and develop methodologies that can assist their design process.
Is there a cross-disciplinary element to your research? If so, who else at the University is involved?
Yes, it is essential for me to collaborate with colleagues from other departments in the University and outside. For example, in a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust on ‘Artificial Intelligence-assisted saltmarsh flood mitigation assessment’, I closely work with an interdisciplinary team of researchers consisting of colleagues in Biosciences and Computer Science departments to explore how Artificial Intelligence can be utilised to develop a novel sustainable flood mitigation solution surrounding saltmarsh ecosystems.
Are there any external collaborators involved?
I have been working with engineering consultants who design flood and coastal erosion defense solutions. I also closely collaborate with Natural Resources Wales who are responsible for developing strategies for sustainable coastal hazard mitigation and the Welsh Coastal Monitoring Centre who regularly surveys coastal change around Wales. In addition, I maintain strong research collaborations with other UK and international Universities.
What is next for your research?
I want to translate my research for wider applications outside the UK and Europe. Although I have very limited time to do my own research I enjoy sharing my research with PhD students and early career researchers, and supporting and mentoring them to develop as future leaders of sustainable coastal engineering research.
Professor Harshinie Karunarathna