October 14th, 2009
Flash flood expert to give 11th annual Lovell Lecture

SUBMITTED REPORT

Eve Gruntfest, an internationally recognized authority on implementing flash-flood warning systems, will present the 11th Annual Lovell Distinguished Lecture at Texas State University on Monday, Oct. 19.

The lecture is sponsored by the James and Marilyn Lovell Center for Environmental Geography and Hazards Research, in the Department of Geography.

Titled “Hydro-Socio-Meteoro-logy: Essential Elements for Flash Flood Mitigation and Research,” the lecture will begin at 8:30 a.m. on the 11th floor of the J.C. Kellam Building on campus. It is free and open to the public.

Gruntfest, who received the 2009 Kenneth E. Spengler Award from the American Meteorological Society, is chair of the American Meteorological Society board’s Societal Impacts study group and director of Social Science Woven into Meteorology (SSWIM) at the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla. Retired as a research scientist from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., she is the founder and co-director of the “WAS * IS” movement (Weather and Society Integrated Studies, www.sip.ucar.edu/wasis). She is also the co-editor of Coping with Flash Floods (Kluwer 2000).

Gruntfest also serves as co-director of Texas State’s new International Flash Flood Laboratory, which will hold a workshop after the lecture. The workshop will give government officials and the public the opportunity to recommend activities the lab should undertake to reduce flash-flood casualties and associated damage.

More information on the lecture and workshop is available at www.geo.txstate.edu/lovell/IFFL/Workshop.html.

— FROM TEXAS STATE NEWS SERVICE/ANN FRIOU