Biography
Jim Hall FREng FRS is Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks in the University of Oxford. Before joining the University of Oxford in 2011 to become Director of the University’s Environmental Change Institute, Prof Hall held academic positions in the civil engineering departments in Newcastle University and the University of Bristol. Prof Hall is internationally recognised for his research on risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty for infrastructure systems, water resource systems, flood and coastal risk management and adaptation to climate change.
Professor Hall is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology. He is a member of the Expert Advisory Council of the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority and was President of the Institution of Civil Engineers for the year 2024-25. He was a member of the UK independent Committee on Climate Change Adaptation from 2009 to 2019, and was Chair of the Science Advisory Committee of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) from 2020 to 2022.
Research Profile
Prof Hall’s group in the University of Oxford is at the forefront of risk analysis of climatic extremes and their impacts on infrastructure networks and economic systems, from local to global scales. He led the development of the National Infrastructure Systems Model (NISMOD), which was used for the UK’s first National Infrastructure Assessment and for analysis of the resilience of energy, transport, digital and water networks in Great Britain.
His group developed the first national water resource systems simulation model for England and Wales. Prof Hall conceived of, and now chairs, the UK’s Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI). His systems analysis methods have been applied worldwide, including in Argentina, Bangladesh, China, Curacao, Egypt, Ghana, Jamaica, St Lucia, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia. He published five books, including, The Future of National Infrastructure: A System-of-Systems Approach, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. He was editor of the journal Water Resources Research from 2017 to 2022.
Research Interests
- Climate adaptation decisions
Engineering adaptation to global change. Decision analysis. Robust decision making under uncertainty. Info-gap theory. Decision support for futures and scenarios analysis.
- Integrated assessment of coupled human and natural systems.
National assessment of infrastructure systems. Infrastructure systems reliability and interdependence. Integrated assessment of long term change in cities. Methodologies for uncertainty analysis in integrated assessments.
- Uncertainty representation in modelling and risk analysis of engineering and environmental systems.
Random set and imprecise probability theories. Sensitivity analysis and model calibration.
- Flood risk analysis and management.
Broad scale flood risk analysis. Reliability analysis of flood defence systems. Advanced sampling based methods. Impacts of climate change and socio-economic change on flood risk. Robust flood risk management decisions under uncertainty.
- Coastal erosion prediction and appraisal.
Simplified process-based modelling of coastal system evolution over extended time and space scales. Stochastic simulation of coastal cliff recession. Use of probabilistic information in coastal management. Impacts of sea level rise.
