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EGU Award Ceremony (Credit: EGU/Foto Pfluegl)

Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Awards 2022 Manuela I. Brunner

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Manuela I. Brunner

Manuela I. Brunner
Manuela I. Brunner

HS Hydrological Sciences

The 2022 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Manuela I. Brunner for outstanding contributions in the field of statistical hydrology of extremes, encompassing floods and droughts, and regional risk assessment.

Manuela I. Brunner’s research has focused on exploring large sample data in hydrology with statistical approaches combined with process knowledge. Particularly, Brunner has investigated hydrological extremes to enhance the assessment of flood and drought risks.

Brunner’s research focuses on analyzing multi-variate datasets to better understand climate- and human-induced changes in the water cycle and their impacts on extreme events. Brunner has developed flexible stochastic simulation techniques to allow for the generation of streamflow time series that exhibit multi-site coherence and dependence, while also allowing for the representation of non-stationarities and the simulation of unobserved extreme events. These are important features for the development of resilient water management plans, the estimation of regional flood risk or the identification of areas prone to multiyear droughts.

Brunner has played a pioneering role in the field of modelling dependences of hydrometeorological variables in order to enhance knowledge on the frequency of compound events and the joint occurrence of extremes across scales. Beyond statistical analyses of co-occurrences in space and time, Brunner’s research has also contributed to better understand the processes governing the strength of inter-dependences and the implications for risk assessment in a warming climate.

Brunner is also a dedicated supporter of open science, having published open datasets and simulation codes. Active in the community, Brunner has shown excellent skills as reviewer and has recently joined the editorial board of EGU journal Hydrology and Earth System Science.

For all these reasons, Brunner is a very worthy recipient of the Hydrological sciences Division’s Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award.

Publication resulting from the award

Brunner, M. I.: Floods and droughts: a multivariate perspective, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 2479–2497, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-2479-2023, 2023.