Rory Nathan

Rory is a Professor at the University of Melbourne and has over 40 years’ experience in engineering and environmental hydrology, mostly in industry, and now focuses his time on research and teaching.

He has made a substantial contribution to industry best practice in a range of engineering and environmental fields, particularly in the use of stochastic methods of flood estimation, the characterisation of hydrologic risk, regional estimation techniques in catchment hydrology, the impact of land-use change, and the assessment of sustainable limits on water resources.

He is a co-editor and contributing author of the current ARR guidelines on flood estimation, and for many years he was Australia’s representative on the International Committee of Large Dams floods committee and a member of the hydrology sub-committee of the NSW Dams Safety Council.

His research activity is marked by over 100 publications in refereed journals and books, and in over 130 refereed conference papers. His research publications have won several national and international awards, including four medals awarded by Engineers Australia for the best paper in civil engineering. In 2000 he was awarded national “Civil Engineer of the Year” by Engineers Australia, and in 2018 he was awarded the Munro Oration, and invited talk by a person “eminent in the field of water resources in Australia”.

Involved in:

• Climate change updates to ARR Guidelines (August 2024)
• ARR training series
• What the PMF? (September 2021)
• ARR Course #5: Design Estimation
• ARR Course #6: Extreme Events