Roger Falconer - Biography#

Roger Falconer graduated with a BSc(Eng) in civil engineering, King’s College, London (1973), followed by an MSc in Hydraulic Engineering, University of Washington, USA (1974), and a PhD in Computational Hydraulics, Imperial College (1976). He has also been awarded higher doctorate degrees from Birmingham University (DEng,1992) and Imperial College (DSc(Eng),1994).

Falconer is primarily known for his research activities in the development, refinement and application of computational hydro-environmental models for predicting hydrodynamic, water quality and sediment transport processes in coastal, estuarine and river waters. He began his academic career at Birmingham University (1977-86), then moved to Bradford University as Professor of Environmental Hydraulics (1987 - 1997) and Head of Department (1993-97), before moving to Cardiff University in 1997, where he founded the Hydro-environmental Research Centre. He has developed three widely used hydro-environmental models, namely FASTER, DIVAST and TRIVAST, for predicting 1D, 2D and 3D hydro-environmental processes in coastal and riverine basins, with these models acquired during the period 1985-2000 by over 40 companies etc., and applied to over 100 environmental impact assessment studies worldwide. He currently continues his research through Cardiff University as Emeritus Professor since October 2018 and as Chair Professor at Hohai University (2019 - date). In addition to these appointments, he has held many Honorary Professorial appointments, particularly in China.

Falconer’s key water related interests include: (i) hydro-environmental modelling; (ii) flood risk modelling; (iii) design of tidal energy schemes; and (iv) global water security. He has pioneered integrated water management solutions from Catchment to Coast (C2C) through dynamically integrated model development and application. He also co-developed the model CONTANK for predicting disinfection processes in water supply contact tanks, and has worked with companies to develop improved models for predicting 1D/2D flood elevation and inundation extent predictions and stability of vehicles and people in floods. He has supervised > 70 PhD students to graduation; and published over 450 papers in leading international journals and conference proceedings. He has delivered > 590 lectures on his research to universities, academies, learned societies and general lectures in over 30 countries.

He is a Fellow (or equivalent) of the: Royal Academy of Engineering, Chinese Academy of Engineering, European Academy of Sciences, and Learned Society of Wales. He was elected President (2011 - 2015) of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research and has received many awards for his work, including: the RAEng Silver Medal (1997) and the IAHR Ippen Award (1991). He consults regularly on projects world-wide, especially on flooding, environmental assessment and tidal energy, and frequently participates in TV and media interviews.