Keith Beven

Keith Beven has worked at Lancaster University for 26 years and is now a Distinguished Professor in the Lancaster Environment Centre. He is the most highly cited hydrologist and has published 10 books and over 350 papers. Recent books include Environmental Modelling: An Uncertain Future? (2009); a 4th Edition of Shaw’s Hydrology in Practice (with Nick Chappell and Rob Lamb, 2011) and a 2nd Edition of Rainfall-Runoff Modelling: The Primer (2012).

His main research interests are in hydrological modelling and understanding the prediction uncertainties associated with environmental models (see www.uncertain-future.org.uk ). He was the originator with Mike Kirkby of the TOPMODEL Concepts and the originator of the Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology. GLUE has been applied to a wide variety of fields including rainfall-runoff modelling, flood inundation, water quality modelling, sediment transport, recharge and groundwater modelling, vegetation growth models, aphid populations, forest fire and tree death modelling.

Current projects include leading the NERC/ScienceWise Catchment Change Management Hub project (ccmhub.net ), novel modelling of flow and transport on hillslopes and in catchments, modelling the impacts of climate and land management on flood runoff and flood frequency, nonparametric estimation of the rainfall-flow nonlinearity, and flood forecasting.

His research has resulted in a number of awards including the Horton and Langbein Awards of the American Geophysical Union, the John Dalton Medal of the European Geophysical Union, and the IAHS/WMO/UNESCO International Hydrology Prize. He also still likes to try and find time to take some photographs (mostly of water, see www.mallerstangmagic.co.uk).