Qiuhua Liang

Professor Qiuhua Liang is an academic and researcher specialising in water engineering and flood risk management. He holds the position of Professor of Water Engineering at Loughborough University and is the UNESCO Chair in Informatics and Multi-hazard Risk Reduction.

Qiuhua Liang
Born	Qiuhua Liang
Education	University of Sheffield
Occupation	Engineer
Engineering career
Discipline	Flood risk engineering Water engineering
Employer(s)	Loughborough University

Career

Professor Liang obtained his PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2001. He has since established himself as a leading expert in computational hydraulics and flood modelling. In 2018, he was appointed as the UNESCO Chair in Informatics and Multi-hazard Risk Reduction, recognising his contributions to the field. Professor Liang is also a Co-director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training Water-WISER, demonstrating his commitment to nurturing the next generation of water engineering researchers. His expertise and leadership in the field were further acknowledged when he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In July 2024, he was part of a group that received the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, for innovation in water research.

Research

His work focuses on developing high-performance mathematical and numerical models for flood simulation and forecasting. Liang has made significant contributions to real-time flood forecasting by coupling GPU-accelerated hydrodynamic models with numerical weather predictions. His research encompasses various aspects of flood modelling, including urban flood simulations, dam-break scenarios, and the integration of multiple data sources. Liang's innovative approaches, such as using deep convolutional neural networks for rapid flood prediction, have advanced the field of flood risk management.