Professor Ivan Haigh

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