Successful PhD Defense at Z_GIS

 

Natural disasters have steadily increased over the last years, particularly floods and landslides. However, many regions are also exposed to multiple threats, depending on their geographic location. Tim Nachappa Gudiyangada investigated these hazards in his doctoral thesis, entitled “Geoinformatics Methods for Multi-Hazards Susceptibility Mapping and Assessments” with a specific approach:

He investigated the hazard component of the risk framework, whereby susceptibility mapping is a crucial step in assessing the probability of the occurrence of the hazard. A susceptibility map identifies the regions that are susceptible to any hazards in the future depending on the greater or lesser possibilities of occurrence. The Thesis particularly contributed to the evaluation of the impact of the influencing features in the susceptibility evaluations.

The thesis specifically evaluated the applicability of the "geon" approach – an object-based aggregation - for susceptibility mapping for the Salzburg region. This specific approach has been successfully applied for landslide and flood assessment, yielding better accuracy than statistical approaches.  Tim developed the first susceptibility maps for the province of Salzburg. Overall, this PhD research offers a methodology that has a better quality precision and can be transferable to other geographical regions. This could be a great advantage for planners and policymakers to identify susceptible regions and to offer tailored mitigation measures and strategies to tackle the occurrence of multi-hazard in the future.

We wish Tim all the best for his future endeavours!