Ms Ms Nithila Devi Nallasamy

PhD student

Indian Institute of Technology MadrasIndia

Research focus

I am currently interested in flood inundation modeling, risk assessment and sustainable adaptation strategies under changing urban and climate scenarios.

SDG targets

11.5

Reduce the adverse effects of natural disasters

11.B

Implement policies for inclusion, resource efficiency and disaster risk reduction

13.1

Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate related disasters

Projects

Ph.D. Thesis: Future floods and management using a hydrologic-urbanization-hydraulic modeling framework: A case study of Adyar basin in Tamil Nadu, India (ongoing). The study deals with development of short- and long-term flood management strategies for the frequently flooded Adyar basin in Tamil Nadu, India. Role of retention storage in flood moderation under various future scenarios of urbanization and climate change is quantified. An algorithm that runs at coarser level while still representing the small features within the numerical grid, such as buildings, streets, minor canals, etc. has been developed.

M.S. Thesis: Improved framework for estimation of actual evapotranspiration of paddy at better spatial and temporal scales using satellite imagery. The proposed framework utilized a novel pixel by pixel disaggregation of normalized vegetation difference index, partially cloud free land surface temperature composite images and an evapotranspiration (ET) interpolation technique based on half-hourly solar insolation imageries from Kalpana-I VHRR, to improve the accuracy of ET at spatial and temporal scales.