About
Ivan is an associated professor in Ocean and Earth Science, at the University of Southampton, UK. He is passionate about all things relating to sea level.
He and his team investigate variations in sea level from time-scales of seconds (waves), to days (tides and storm surges), through to long-term century scale rises in mean sea level, and its impact on the coast. A key thrust of his and his teams research is determining how to effectively translate the results of these studies to local scales in practical terms, in ways that will aid coastal management; he has worked with many government/consultancy organisations in this regard.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- I currently have 8 active research grants (4 as principle investigator (PI)) worth £4.8M.
- I am the PI on two international grants that started in 2019, both looking at compound flooding. Compound flooding (when the combination, or successive occurrence of, two or more hazard events leads to an extreme impact e.g., coastal and fluvial flooding), can greatly exacerbate the adverse consequences associated with flooding in coastal regions and yet it remains under-appreciated and poorly understood. In the £788k NERC- and NSF- (US National Science Foundation) funded CHANCE project, I am leading a team (working alongside researchers from the University of Central Florida), to deliver a new integrated approach to make a step-change in our understanding, and prediction of, the source mechanisms driving compound flood events in coastal areas around the North Atlantic basin. In the £575k NERC- and NAFOSTED- (Vietnam’s National Foundation for Science and Technology Development) funded project, I am leading a team that is working with colleagues in Vietnam to map and characterise present, and predict future, flood risk from coastal, fluvial, and surface sources and, uniquely, to assess the risk of compound flooding across the Mekong delta; one of the three most vulnerable deltas in the world. I am also the PI on a grant, which started in 2021. In this 41k project, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat), we are assessing past and future closures of the six storm surge barriers in the Netherlands.
- In 2021, I was awarded a 3-year (50% of my time) prestigious Knowledge Exchange Fellowship funded by NERC (UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council) and worth £154k. This fellowship builds strongly on my prior research and the overall goal is to provide guidance and tools that will help storm surge barrier operators better prepare for the impacts of climate change across every area of their operation now and into the future. Within the fellowship I am working primary with the UK Environment Agency (EA) and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat). However, to ensure the work undertaken can benefit all the existing (and planned) surge barriers around the world, I am also working closely with I-STORM. I-STORM is an international knowledge sharing network for professionals relating to the management, operation and maintenance of storm surge barriers, and has representation from all the surge barriers worldwide.
- I am the co-investigator (Co-I) on a £198k projected funded by DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). This project, involving researchers from 8 institutes, aims to assess monitoring and historical change of the coastline. I am also a Co-I (and Southampton lead) on a £345k Met Office funded project, led by the University of Reading. This project is developing a new approach to assessing rare low probability but high impact events for risk assessment and planning.
- Furthermore, I am Co-I on two European Union funded projects, worth £2.7M. The £1M ACROSS consortium project (led by the University of Southampton), is taking an innovative multidisciplinary approach that embraces marine geoarchaeology, oceanography, and archaeogenetics, to address one of the most exciting and enduring research questions within Archaeology, namely; how did the colonisation of Sahul (modern day Australasia) take place? I am leading the work on changes in tides. The £1.7M RISeR consortium project (led by the University of Leads, and I am the Southampton lead) is reconstructing magnitudes and rates of Last Interglacial sea-level change to inform high-end projections of sea-level rise beyond 2100 for northwest Europe. I am leading the socio-economic analysis component of the project.
Research projects
Active projects
Completed projects
Publications
Teaching
I am deeply passionate about delivering high-quality, engaging, interactive and research- and stakeholder-led teaching at undergraduate and MSc level.
Over the last 10 academic years I have: co-ordinated and taught Modelling Coastal Processes / Sea-Level Rise & Coastal Management (SOES6011; taught 50% of Coasts & Estuaries (SOES2024); instructed at the Plymouth field course (SOES301) every other year; contributed each year to Contemporary Topics (SOES6074) and co-ordinated the coastal engineering part of the MSc Research Projects (FEEG6012) for 8 years. In 2 previous academic years, I also co-ordinated and taught Intro. to Coasts for Engineers (SOES6074), which I developed, and Key Skills for Coastal Engineers (SOES6060). Student feedback on my teaching is consistently excellent, having increased from a mean individual rating of 4.5 out of 5, prior to my promotion to Associate Professor, to 4.8 out of 5 over the last 6 years. I am now helping to mentor Junior staff as they undertake PGCAP
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Ivan was born in Zambia (about as far as you can get from the sea – which is odd given he is now an oceanographer) and moved to the UK when he was 19.
He undertook a BSc at the University of Southampton, studying Oceanography and Maths between 1998 and 2001.
After graduating, he worked as a numerical modelling at Assocaite British Ports Marine Envrionmental Research between 2001 and 2005.
After this, he returned to the University of Southampton to do a PhD between 2005 and 2009. The Phd focused on changes in mean and extreme sea levels in the English Channel.
He then undertook Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Western Australia between 2009 and 2012.
After this he return to the University of Southampton as a lecturer. In 2016 he was promoted to Associate Professor.