Alison is an EPSRC-funded DPhil student studying Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for coastal flood risk reduction. She holds a BSc in Mathematical Sciences from University College Cork, and an MSc in Mathematical Modelling and Scientific Computing from the University of Oxford.

The focus of her research is improving the evidence base for NbS and developing better predictive models for how coastal habitats can reduce coastal flooding, as well as accounting for present and future economic implications of resulting flood severities and NbS co-benefits. She is currently seeking to better understand the extent to which models are affected by spatially-varying ecosystem properties, how this affects bias and uncertainty in final predictions, and develop new methods which better account for these biases and uncertainties. Her main interests are statistics, machine learning, and mathematical modelling and she is particularly interested using these to create innovative modelling methodologies which incorporate Earth Observation data as well as knowledge of the physics underlying flooding processes.