Maximillian Van Wyk de Vries

Hazard, risk, and disaster research with a particular focus on multihazard and the impact of human activity on hazards.

 

Research Area

I am an Assistant Professor in Natural Hazards in the departments of Geography and Earth Sciences, and lead the Cambridge Complex and Multihazard research group (CoMHaz). I work broadly on multihazard, in particular focusing on landslides, volcanoes, cryospheric hazards, and the interactions between these. I have wide ranging research interests, in particular integrating remote sensing, numerical modelling, and fieldwork to understand the interactions between multiple hazards.

Some specific area I am currently working on are:

- Evaluating hazard and risk at ice-clad volcanoes. Despite being by far the most deadly type of volcanic eruption over the past century, many aspects of glaciovolcanic systems remain poorly understood. This is particularly important and timely to study given the rapid changes these areas are undergoing in a warming climate.

- Large scale landslide detection using satellite imagery, including development of new methods for detecting landslides and assessing the quality of inventories.

- Developing novel methods to detect movement in digital imagery, in particular applied to the mapping of ice velocities and detection of slow-moving landslides.

- Understanding the two-way interactions between glacial retreat and landsliding. Glacier retreat can increase landslide frequency and magnitude, but also be affected by landslide emplacement in various ways.

 

Project Interests

- Understanding how climate change is going to modify hazard in different parts of the world: will it make them more or less dangerous? In particular, I am interested in projects considering the effects of deglaciation in the Himalaya and Andes on local hazard.

- Large-scale hazard monitoring, for instance the use of optical (feature tracking) and radar (InSAR) techniques to monitor landslides and volcanoes

- Multihazard modelling – determining new and effective methods to consider multiple hazards in the same model, including new AI-based approaches.

- Multidisciplinary approaches to risk and disaster reduction, bridging physical and human sciences.