Vance Z H Tan GMICE PBICSc is a Sultan’s Scholar at the University of Oxford and an engineer by training, taking his MEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from the University of Warwick. Vance’s research focuses on understanding how national governments could rethink long-term investment strategies in flood risk management set against a backdrop of budget-constrained resources. His work aims to develop and implement methodologies in flood risk management for optimising portfolios of adaptation measures and provides a rigorous framework for the prioritisation of schemes in different national settings, with an emphasis on cross-national compatibility as well as maximising both economic efficiency and risk reduction.

Vance is interested in understanding how future flood risks can be managed by considering policy changes and the anticipatory actions of adaptation measures at a national scale.

Before embarking on his DPhil study at the Environmental Change Institute in 2018, Vance received engineering training at Ove Arup and Partners in Brunei, the Brunei Public Works Department and Hampshire County Council.