Machine Learning for the Management of Water Resources and Hydro-Climatological Disasters

"R. S. Ajin, works as a Hazard Analyst (Geology) with the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA), Thiruvananthapuram, India. He has an M.Sc. degree in Applied Geology from the University of Madras (Chennai, India) With seven years of research experience, he has presented and published more than 30 research papers and edited/reviewed more than 450 manuscripts for various national and international conferences and journals. An Editorial board member for 11 international journals and associated with more than 65 international conferences held in 20 different countries as a member of the Scientific Committee, Technical Program Committee, or Reviewer Committee. Prof. Dr. R. R. KRISHNAMURTHY is a Geologist specialized in the field of Satellite Remote Sensing Applications in Coastal Management. He has 27 years of teaching and research experience and has served in different capacities in Anna University, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and the University of Madras. He was an YSSP participant at the Advanced Computer Applications (ACA) Programme of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria, and served as Visiting Professor at the Inter-Graduate School Programme for Sustainable Development and Serviceable Societies (GSS), Kyoto University, Japan. As a recipient of the Environmental Award by the Government of Tamil Nadu, he has produced several end user-oriented, significant research outputs such as Climate Action Plan (CAP), Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI) and Climate Disaster Recovery Process (CDRP) for Chennai, Tsunami Vulnerability Atlas for the Chennai coast, teaching tools for high school students on Disaster Management etc. As the Founding Principal of the University of Madras Constituent College in Nemmeli Village, East Coast Road, Kanchipuram District during 2011-2014, he successfully implemented the introduction of Disaster Education for rural coastal communities to enhance their resilience to disasters. His remarkable research accomplishments include participation and contributions in India’s ambitious National Programmes on Marine Satellite Remote Sensing Information Service (MARSIS) and the Establishment of India’s Early Warning System for Tsunami and Storm Surges. Based on his expertise in this domain, he has closely interacted with the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the National Disaster Management Authority, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Earth Sciences. His contributions under extension and outreach activities include (i) training of key decision-makers in India under the UK-DFID Programme on Coastal Management jointly with the Universities of Newcastle and Bath, UK and (ii) UNISDR, Geneva and the World Bank Institute, Washington DC, funded/supported programme on Building Resilience to Indian Ocean Tsunami, which aimed to train different target groups in India and the Maldives. In the aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, he has trained about one thousand school teachers in India and several field practitioners both in India and the Maldives. Romulus Costache received B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in geography from the University of Bucharest, Romania. He is currently a researcher at Romania's National Institute of Hydrology and Water Management, and he also works on other research projects on the side, including the following: Project Director at Transilvania University of Bra?ov, Hydrologist Expert at the National Administration ""Romanian Waters"", Scientific Researcher at the University of Bucharest, Socio-Economic Expert at the Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development, Romania. He published many scientific papers in high-rank journals like: Journal of Hydrology, Science of The Total Environment, CATENA, Remote Sensing, Journal of Environmental Management, Water Resources Management, Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, Ecological Indicators, Water. Also, he is a member of the Topic Board Editors of the Geosciences journal – MDPI. His research interests include hydrology, natural hazards, geographic information system, bivariate statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applied to natural hazard susceptibility assessment. Salim Heddam is Associate Professor Faculty of Science in the Agronomy Department at Hydraulic Division Université Skikda, Algeria. K.S. Sajin Kumar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology at University of Kerala, India."