Academic research is fundamental to Fathom. We have a strong research pedigree and continue to partner with leading academic and commercial organisations to push the boundaries of science and further our understanding of flooding.
We continue to forge a close academic partnership with the University of Bristol, continually publishing our research in world-leading scientific journals. Work to date has entailed: validation of our US and global flood maps, development of a US cat model, and the uncovering of revolutionary insights into flood risk quantification globally.
NASA use Fathom’s flood hazard data, including in the wake of Hurricane Harvey when they were used to produce loss indices. Fathom have also joint-coordinated NASA’s Flood workshops.
Fathom partnered with Google to aid in our unprecedented scientific validation of the Fathom-US flood layers. In particular, we used Google Earth Engine – Google’s cloud-based platform for planetary-scale geospatial analyses – to compare our flood model to observations and local models of flood events, providing objective and public quantification of the skill of our modelling techniques.
Fathom works with the Wharton Risk Center on a variety of projects relating to flood risk in the US, leveraging our world-leading expertise in hazard modelling. In particular: analysis of US vulnerability functions, patterns of flood insurance penetration, and understanding historic changes to flood exposure.
Fathom used new population data produced by Facebook to explore flood exposure in developing regions. The findings of the work were published in Nature Communications.
We worked with the EPA to understand how demographic and developmental changes throughout this century might impact flood risk in the US. Using their projections of population and land-use change alongside our flood maps, we expect an 83% increase in population exposed to the 100-year flood and an acceleration in the development of risky areas.
The University of Bologna helped us to test our new approach to flood defence representation using their modelling expertise of the well-engineered Po River Basin in Northern Italy. When using our new algorithm, simulation of historic flood events were improved even over traditional engineering-based approaches.
Fathom partnered with the Iowa Flood Center to compare flood mapping and modelling approaches at large scales. Versus their high-quality, engineering-grade models of Iowan cities, our US-wide model could replicate their data to within error.
UC Irvine and Fathom study a variety of flood modelling related projects, including the development of innovative financial tools for dealing with costly environmental problems.