Thomas Wahl of UCF has developed a global storm surge database that will help fill in gaps in historical data and hopefully improve storm surge flood risk assessments. Wahl used statistical methods and machine learning tools to create the database.

“We need to understand how climate change and variability affected storm surges in the past because this will be an important guide for the future,” said Wahl. “And in order to do that we need relatively long tide gauge records, which we don’t have in most places.”

• Thomas Wahl