Center for Natural Hazard and Disaster Research

The mission of the Center for Natural Hazard and Disaster Research (NHDR) is to identify and characterize natural hazards, foster development of engineered systems that rely on measurement and detection, create predictive models and design information systems. Better information means better decisions and therefore, reduced losses due to severe weather, drought and flooding. NHDR's research is focused on reducing societal impacts of severe weather through integration of observations and predictive models.

The NHDR research vision is to identify and apply technological solutions that make society more resilient to natural hazards, thereby mitigating their disastrous impacts. NHDR aims to anticipate and assess risk instead of simply reacting to disasters, focus on mitigation that builds resilience, and implement warning and information dissemination systems that allow society to bring its resilience into play.  NHDR research areas include: flood prediction, application of distributed hydrologic modeling and weather radar, hydrodynamic modeling of coastal inundation, and remote sensing of precipitation for flooding and landslide prediction.

The center is directed by Baxter E. Vieux, PhD, PE. Dr. Vieux, specializes in distributed hydrologic systems using GIS and Radar. Associate Director, Randall L. Kolar, PhD, PE focuses on hydrologic and hydrodynamic modeling. NHDR Assistant Director, Yang (Eric) Hong, Ph.D. is an expert in satellite remote sensing of precipitation and landslide prediction.

Representative projects at NHDR include: inland flooding and coastal modeling of inundation for hurricane scenarios and landslide prediction using radar, satellite and models.

“NHDR applies technological advances in weather detection, warning systems and model predictions to mitigate disasters resulting from severe weather.” - Baxter Vieux, Director