Susan Hanson

Ms Susan Hanson is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.

Susan is a member of the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) and has also been a member of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.   Prior to this she was based in the Flood Hazard Research Centre, at Middlesex University.

Her research has coverd a range of climate related topics but her main area of interest is coastal adaptation to change.Recent topics have covered:

  • Coastal implications of climate change: impacts (physical and economic), vulnerability and adaptive and management responses;
  • The development of sea-level scenarios for adaptation planning;
  • Coastal systems anaylsis: physical and societal aspects;
  • Large-scale coastal morphological behaviour, including flooding and erosion.

Research

Susan is currently working as part of the DECCMA (DEltas, vulnerability & Climate Change: Migration & Adaptation) project which is analysing the impacts of climate change and other environmental drivers across contrasting deltas in Africa and Asia.

Previous projects include:

  • EPSRC ‘Shipping in Changing Climates‘ project
  • exposure estimates for large port cities to climate extremes carried out with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
  • Department of Energy and Climate Change’s AVOID programme
  • the global DIVA (Dynamic Interactive Vulnerability Assessment) database
  • EC funded THESEUS project which is looking at integrated coastal zone management with an emphasis on coastal risk assessment and mitigatio;
  • the costs of adaptation to sea-level rise for the World and Asian Development Banks
  • INTERREG IIIB funded project BRANCH (Biodiversity Requires Adaptation in Northwest Europe under a Changing climate), which investigated the impacts of sea-level rise on designated habitats on the South coast of the UK;
  • The Tyndall Coastal Simulator.
  • CIRCE (Climate change and Impact Research: the Mediterranean Environment) looking at the impacts of sea-level rise;
  • PESETA (Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on boTtom-up Analysis) projects;