Research 2025-26

Funding successes

We secured major new grants to drive climate resilience, crisis preparedness and risk science.

• BAND (Building a Monitoring Network for Climate Resilience in the Chao Phraya Delta) — Professor Mohammad Shamsudduha secured an International Science Partnerships Fund grant to develop a sensor‑driven climate‑resilience monitoring network in partnership with King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand.
• SUEWS (Surface Urban Energy and Water Balance Scheme) — Dr Ting Sun received a Large Award from the Software Sustainability Institute’s Research Software Maintenance Fund to enhance the SUEWS urban climate model, improving its sustainability and launching a new community forum in collaboration with the University of Reading.
• Close The LOop: Attributing the Impacts of Past and Future Climate Disasters to Climatic and Policy Changes. Professor Gianluca Pescaroli, together with Professor Mark Pelling and Dr Femke Mulder, secured a major Horizon Europe award to advance methods for attributing the impacts of climate‑related disasters to climatic and policy change. They secured this grant with an international consortium led by VU Amsterdam.
• Understanding Social Complexity to Improve Crisis Preparedness: Dr Sarah Dryhurst and Professor Fatemeh Jalayer won a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network grant as part of a consortium. Two funded PhD students will be working at UCL Risk and Disaster Reduction on the use of storylines for horizon scanning and risk communication in disaster contexts.
• FUTURA (Future Climate, Impact and Emission Pathways and Infrastructure: Informing Risk, Transitions and Responses for Assessment and Society) — Dr Shipra Jain, as part of a consortium in receipt of an EU HORIZON 2025 grant, will help coordinate European modelling and infrastructure efforts to jointly develop and deliver a sustainable system for future emissions scenarios and climate projections, supporting assessment, risk analysis, and societal responses to climate change.
• IPCC AR7 contributions – Dr Shipra Jain was awarded grants from the IPCC/Wellcome Trust Funding Programme and UK Department of Energy and Net Security to support writing Chapter 8 of the IPCC AR7 WG1 report.

UCL grants

• AGROWAT (Adaptive Groundwater Management for Water and Food Security in the Barind Tract of Bangladesh) — as principal investigator, Professor Mohammad Shamsudduha received support for this project from the UCL Mathematics and Physical Sciences QR-Policy Support Fund 2025/26.
• Map & Drill: Crowdmapping and Crowdfunding for Smarter Water Wells in Ethiopia —  Professor Mohammad Shamsudduha secured a grant for this project through UCL Grand Challenges Data Empowered Societies 2025/26.
• Global Network-of-Networks for Vector-Borne Disease: Data-Driven Decision-Making Through AI, IoT, and Community Action — Professor Patty Kostkova received a grant for this project through UCL Grand Challenges Data Empowered Societies 2025/26.
• UCL EPSRC Landscape Award (UELA) — Dr Roberto Gentile secured a PhD international scholarship co-funded with Willis Tower Watson.
• UCL Mathematics and Physical Sciences Faculty award – Dr Rozana Himaz secured funding to host a visiting professor from Sri Lanka.

Policy impact

We translated research into guidance for decision‑makers and contributed to global policy processes.

• Professor Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson’s work on institutional violence and legal entrapment was presented to the Swedish government during their annual research event, this year on ‘Politics and Future Challenges’.
• Mark Pelling and Virginia Murray were invited by the International Science Council (ISC) and its programme on Integrated Research for Disaster Risk to lead a global review of the ways in which vulnerability and related terms such as fragility or susceptibility are used in the UNDRR Hazard Information Profiles.
• Dr Rozana Himaz was a co-author for the T20 South Africa Policy Brief, ‘Building Financial Resilience: A Tailored Approach to Strengthening Disaster Risk Finance and Global Financial Safety Nets in the Asia-Pacific’.
• Dr Dan Haines co-authored a policy brief on Environmental and Societal Damage in Wartime Ukraine.
• Professor Ilan Kelman spoke at Brocher Foundation event, ‘Can disaster response ever be neutral?’.
• Dr Ting Sun, with UCL colleagues, contributed to the Fourth Independent Assessment of UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA4-IA), a climate risk report for the built environment.

Research dissemination and specialist engagement

We shared our expertise widely with academic, technical and practitioner communities.

• Professor Gianluca Pescaroli started a visiting position at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, Risk Assessment and Adaptation Strategies Division.
• Professor Mohammad Shamsudduha delivered talks for the Association of Iraqi Academics, the Stockholm International Water Institute, and the Green Events and Innovations Conference.
• Dr Roberto Gentile delivered invited talks at the International Workshop on Durability and Sustainability of Concrete Structures, Institution of Structural Engineers and the PhD Autumn School in Security, Risk and Vulnerability.
• Dr Roberto Gentile launched Open Vulnerability, an open library for natural hazard impact models.
• Dr Rozana Himaz was appointed Guest Professor at Keio University, Japan, and presented at the Centre for the Study of African Economies and Integrated Disaster Risk Management Society conferences.
• Dr Megnaa Mehtta spoke at the Coastal Worlds Conference, Royal Asiatic Society, ChangeNOW, UCL Anthropology and Lewes Refugee Support Group, and delivered a guest lecture for King’s College London’s Master of Law (LLM) programme.
• Dr Mhari Gordon facilitated a stress-test workshop with community members in Tofino, British Columbia as part of the Community and Infrastructure Resilience to Climate-geological Long-term Effects (CIRCLE) project.
• Professor Ilan Kelman was appointed to the Lancet commission on sea-level rise, health, and justice.