Rate My Professor Claire Walsh

Professor Claire Walsh serves as Professor in Water Security and Director of Civil and Geospatial Engineering within the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. She earned her PhD in Civil Engineering and BSc (First Class Honours) in Geography from the same institution and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research centers on global water security, urban flood risk assessment and management, green infrastructure, climate change impacts on water resources, infrastructure business models, and hydromorphology. As Co-Director of Newcastle's Centre of Research Excellence in Water Infrastructure and Urban Systems and the National Green Infrastructure Facility, she advances sustainable water solutions. Professor Walsh contributes to academia as an Editorial Panel Member for Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering Sustainability and as Champion for Newcastle University's Global Challenges Academy Sustainable Water Network. She leads modules such as Hydrosystems Engineering, Integrated River Basin Management, and Water Management: Issues and Challenges at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

In her distinguished career, Professor Walsh has held key positions including Elected Honorary Secretary of the British Hydrological Society from 2008 to 2012, Chair of the Organising Committee for the British Hydrological Society's International Symposium in 2010 hosted at Newcastle University, and various committee roles in the Royal Meteorological Society and British Hydrological Society. Her accolades include Newcastle University's Best Environment Research Project awards in 2016 (BUG project) and 2014 (Cafe Waste project), and a prestigious scholarship to Brown University’s International Advanced Research Institute on Climate Change and Water Resources in 2011. Notable publications encompass "Using global datasets to estimate flood exposure at the city scale: an evaluation in Addis Ababa" (Frontiers in Environmental Science, 2024), "Threshold-based flood early warning in an urbanizing catchment through multi-source data integration: Satellite and citizen science contribution" (Journal of Hydrology, 2024), "Activated carbon amendment of sand in the base of a permeable pavement reduces total nitrogen and nitrate leaching" (Science of the Total Environment, 2024), and "Nature-based solutions for urban climate change adaptation" (BioScience, 2019). Her interdisciplinary approach emphasizes collaboration with end-users to deliver impactful research on climate adaptation and sustainable infrastructure.