Keith John Beven 

for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of hydrological processes and hydrological modelling

Keith Beven was appointed in 1991 as Professor of Hydrology at Lancaster University. He has made fundamental and innovative contributions over many years in a range of hydrological topics, especially model development and modelling methodology. His research interests include: rainfall-runoff modelling (including TOPMODEL which has been used in more than 30 countries world-wide); forecasting flood inundation; surface and subsurface tracing experiments and pollutant transport prediction (including random particle models for surface and subsurface transport and the ADZ model for pollution incident prediction); surface to atmosphere water fluxes; and predictive uncertainty in environmental models including the GLUE methodology and fuzzy set methods.

He has published more than 150 papers and books. His work has been acknowledged world-wide and he has an international reputation. Indicators of his esteem are:

  - American Geophysical Union Horton Award in 1991
  - Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1995
  - International Chair, Francqui Foundation, Belgium, 1999-2000 (the first one to be offered in Environmental Science)
  - Associate Editor, Advances in Water Resources
  - Associate Editor, Hydrological Processes
  - Associate Editor, Journal of Forecasting
  - Member, Scientific Committee of French National Programme in Hydrology (1997-2000)
  - Member, Evaluation Committee, Laboratoire des Transferts en Hydrologie et Environnement, Grenoble, France

In addition he has given a number of invited keynote talks at international events and has served on many national committees. He is a familiar figure at the EGS General Assemblies.