«Using creative methods to look for solutions»

Manuela Brunner leads the new Hydrology & Climate Impacts in Mountain Regions research group at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF. On a walk around Lake Davos, she tells us what she is working on and why it is relevant for Switzerland in an age of climate change. The SLF showcases the research groups of the Climate Change, Extremes and Natural Hazards in Alpine Regions Research Centre CERC , in no particular order. Founded in 2021, the CERC is sponsored by the Canton of Grisons and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and is supported by ETH Zurich. It is part of the SLF in Davos. Manuela, you're a geographer and climate scientist. When did you decide to specialise in floods and droughts? The project I did for my Matura [school-leaving qualification] was already on this topic. There had been once-in-a-century flooding in Switzerland in 2005, so I surveyed people in a commune in the canton of Uri to find out what they thought of the extreme event. Years later, when I was looking for a topic for my Master's thesis, flooding seemed like the obvious choice again. As a group leader, you now get to devote all your attention to the subject. What exactly does your work entail? I quantify where and how frequently extreme events of different kinds are likely to happen and how the probability of such events will change in the future. I do this for both floods and droughts. Both are very important for planning processes, especially in this age of climate change. So this work has social relevance, particularly in Switzerland?