Jennifer L. Irish

About

Dr. Jennifer Irish specializes in coastal engineering, focusing on storm surge characterization, surge hazard assessment, and nature-based coastal infrastructure. Her research aims to enhance community resilience against climate change impacts through coastal hazard mitigation efforts.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Geography
• Environmental resource management
• Engineering
• Environmental science
• Data science
• Public relations
• Environmental planning
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Rapid prediction of peak storm surge from tropical cyclone track time series using machine learning

  Coastal Engineering · 2021 · 102 citations

  DOI

• Research Needs, Challenges, and Strategic Approaches for Natural Hazards and Disaster Reconnaissance

  Frontiers in Built Environment · 2020 · 74 citations

  Natural hazards and disaster reconnaissance investigations have provided many lessons for the research and practice communities and have greatly improved our scientific understanding of extreme events. Yet, many challenges remain for these communities, including improving our ability to model hazards, make decisions in the face of uncertainty, enhance community resilience, and mitigate risk. State-of-the-art instrumentation and mobile data collection applications have significantly advanced the…

  DOI

• Natural Hazards Reconnaissance With the NHERI RAPID Facility

  Frontiers in Built Environment · 2020 · 41 citations

  In 2016 NSF funded an interdisciplinary multi-institutions team to develop and operate the Natural Hazards Reconnaissance Facility (known as the “RAPID”) as part of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program. To enable support of state of the art natural hazard reconnaissance research, the RAPID facility’s instrumentation portfolio and operational plan were developed over the following two years. Input was gathered from the natural hazards engineering community, the…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Storm surges and extreme sea levels: Review, establishment of model intercomparison and coordination of surge climate projection efforts (SurgeMIP).

  Weather and Climate Extremes · 2024-05-14 · 40 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Coastal flood damage is primarily the result of extreme sea levels. Climate change is expected to drive an increase in these extremes. While proper estimation of changes in storm surges is essential to estimate changes in extreme sea levels, there remains low confidence in future trends of surge contribution to extreme sea levels. Alerting local populations of imminent extreme sea levels is also critical to protecting coastal populations. Both predicting and projecting extreme sea levels and req…

  PublisherDOI

• Advances in Morphodynamic Modeling of Coastal Barriers: A Review

  Journal of Waterway Port Coastal and Ocean Engineering · 2023-05-30 · 22 citations

  reviewOpen access

  As scientific understanding of barrier morphodynamics has improved, so has the ability to reproduce observed phenomena and predict future barrier states using mathematical models. To use existing models effectively and improve them, it is important to understand the current state of morphodynamic modeling and the progress that has been made in the field. This manuscript offers a review of the literature regarding advancements in morphodynamic modeling of coastal barrier systems and summarizes cu…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NEESR: Tsunami Run-up and Withdrawal Dynamics on a Sloping Beach with Discontinuous Macro-Roughness

  NSF · $686k · 2012–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Robert Weiss

  73 shared

• Donald T. Resio

  27 shared

• Troy Tanner

  University of Florida

  23 shared

• Francisco Olivera

  21 shared

• Kurtis R. Gurley

  20 shared

• Scott B. Miles

  20 shared

• Ann Bostrom

  University of Washington

  20 shared

• Laura N. Lowes

  University of Washington

  20 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Civil Engineering

  University of Delaware

  2005

• M.S., Civil Engineering

  Lehigh University

  1994

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  Lehigh University

  1992

Awards & honors

• Fellow, American Society of Civil Engineers 2015 - 2017
• Civil Engineering Excellence in Research Award, Texas A&M Un…
• Zachry Department of Civil Engineering Award for Excellence,…
• Department of the Army Superior Civilian Service Award, U.S.…
• Department of the Army Achievement Medal, U.S. Army Corps of…

Similar researchers at Virginia Tech

• Marc A. Edwardsh-73
• Stanley Granth-53
• John C. Littleh-52