Alois Tilloy

Aloïs is a PhD researcher at the Geography department of King’s College London since January 2017. Before his PhD, Aloïs completed a two years Bachelor in Engineering specialized in thermodynamics and fluid dynamics at the University of Grenoble and a MSc in Water Engineering at Polytech Nice Sophia (University of Nice).

While he excelled in his core subjects of engineering training, he later decided to specialize on a slightly different track in hydrology and the study of extreme events. He participated in projects on flood risk assessment and resilience in Colombia and France.

Thanks to these opportunities he was given the chance to work as an intern in EDF DTG in Grenoble in the DMM department (Development Measure Methods) to complete his MSc. His MSc thesis was on dynamic rating curve assessment, especially in the qualification of the impact of this new process on EDF hydrometric stations network.

He also undertook a Master in Management at the University of Nice, adding to his skillset in managing teams and social interactions within a business context. His management thesis was on the new organisational challenges for big corporations.

His PhD at King’s is in the context of multiple natural hazards combinations and interrelations. The aim is to understand current methodologies at work and design a probabilistic model for quantifying hazard interrelationships that is useful for energy infrastructures.

Many areas in the world are prone to events that include more than one natural hazard that impact the same location during the same time period. I call these events multi-hazards events and are based on physical phenomena (e.g., thunderstorm, mid-latitude cyclone). For example, in 2010, storm Xynthia hit the west coast of France. The storm itself was not particularly extreme for the season but the coincidence of extreme wind, high tides, storm surge and the fact that the soils were already saturated led to huge damage (CCR, 2017). In a second example, in winter 2014, the UK experienced a succession of major storms that led to severe damage due to wind, flooding and avalanches in Scotland (Met Office, 2015). In a third example, extreme thunderstorms occurred in the Paris region in 2001, which triggered lightning, flooding, mudslides and ground collapse, with subsequent damage to railway networks (CCR,2017). These three events all include multiple natural hazards that are interrelated (in different ways), with the events impacting on a given region within a time period. 

This research is funded by EDF Energy, the biggest supplier of electricity by volume in Great Britain. Energy facilities (e.g. nuclear power plants, electric grid, wind turbines) are critical infrastructures and there is a need for more informations about multi-hazard events to ensure their safety. The aim of this research is within the context of interrelationships between natural hazards (multi-hazard) to understand current methodologies and design a probabilistic model for the quantification of hazard interrelationships that is useful for energy infrastructures. 

To understand current methodologies used for quantifying hazard interrelationships, literature  from this  highly multidisciplinary field will be reviewed (it includes statisticians, physical and social geographers, earth scientists, civil engineers). To increase knowldege on hazard interrelationships, measures of the interrelationships of two or more hazards as well as the temporal and spatial scales of multi-hazard events will be developed.