Brett Sanders
Chancellor’s Professor
- Irvine CA UNITED STATES
Brett Sanders seeks to advance knowledge and models of environmental dynamics interactions.
Media
Social
Biography
Sanders’ research group specializes in the development of innovative algorithms for flow and transport in river and coastal systems and the integration of information technologies to create more accurate and efficient simulation tools. Flooding and erosion hazards are the primary focus of current research, particularly coastal flooding and urban flooding. Other interests include surface water quality, low impact development impacts on hydrology, dam-break flooding, aerial and terrestrial lidar scanning, geographical information systems, high performance computing, simulation tools for decision-making.
Areas of Expertise
Accomplishments
Best Professor of the Year Award
2021
Engineering Student Council, Samueli School of Engineering
Innovator of the Year Nominee
2022
Orange County Business Journal
Outstanding Post-Secondary STEM Educator
2022
OC STEM Initiative
125 Most Influential People of Orange County
2023
Orange County Register
Innovator of the Year Award
2023
Samueli School of Engineering
Education
University of California, Berkeley
BS
Civil Engineering
1993
University of Michigan
MS
Civil Engineering
1994
University of Michigan
PhD
Civil Engineering
1997
Affiliations
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
- Chi Epsilon Honor Society (XE)
- International Association of Hydraulic Research (IAHR)
- Coastal Education and Research Foundation (CERF)
Media Appearances
Southern California coastal communities prepare for potential impacts from Hurricane Polo
KCBS-TV online
2026-09-23
“The beaches, the structures, the impacts that we're seeing a couple of weeks ago, when Marie came in, could be revisited once again with this upcoming storm. It's very similar.” UC Irvine Professor Brett Sanders is an expert on coastal erosion. “This Polo developed really quickly into a category five hurricane and what that means is that the winds were at enormous speeds over the ocean. And it's those really high speed winds that are capable of producing the big waves, especially when those winds are sustained over large areas and for extended period of time. The good news is that the storm weakened a little bit and so the winds have receded somewhat.”
The California Surf Spot With Epic Waves—and Rusty Metal Spikes
The Wall Street Journal online
2026-09-22
El Niño can create a surfing paradise in Southern California. It elevates sea-surface temperatures across the eastern Pacific, fueling hurricanes that send big swells to south-facing beaches. But the phenomenon also creates wind patterns that cause local sea levels to temporarily rise by six to 12 inches, said Brett Sanders, a University of California, Irvine professor who studies sand movement. Those conditions—and unusually consistent groundswells from storms off New Zealand—are scouring sand from many beaches.
Beach loss worries heightened as big waves, king tides batter Southern California coast
The Orange County Register online
2026-06-18
“This event shows just how threatening a big storm event can be when there’s a coincidence of threatening factors: the combination of high tides, big swell and this part of the season being when these beaches tend to be the most narrow,” said Brett Sanders, professor of civil engineering at UC Irvine and an expert on the region’s erosion challenges. “Those factors led to severe impacts observed this week.”
New Study Proves that SoCal Beaches Are Growing — And Hermosa Beach Is Part of the Story
The Hermosa Review online
2026-02-14
"There's been a number of reports suggesting that Southern California beaches are disappearing," said Brett Sanders, Chancellor's Professor of Engineering, Urban Planning and Public Policy at UC Irvine and one of the study's lead authors. "What surprised the research team was that the most urbanized and heavily dammed segment of the California coastline — from Santa Barbara down to San Diego — beaches there were growing at a time when you might think that because of all the human influence, they might be shrinking."
Zillow is dropping climate risk scores. Here’s why it matters
San Francisco Chronicle online
2025-12-02
In February, the Chronicle reported that scientists were concerned about how the scores were calculated and the accuracy of the risk measurements. … Brett Sanders, a UC Irvine Chancellor’s Professor of civil and environmental engineering, said that the current changes reflect broader challenges as property owners confront climate risks and associated costs. “I think we're going to be going through at least a decade or more of these ebbs and flows of how we manage the problem,” Sanders said.
Event Appearances
Measuring the Multi-Benefit Potential of Stormwater Capture: A Modeling Approach for Southern California and Beyond
Energy and Environment Committee Meeting
2024-04-04
Adapting Southern California Flood Infrastructure for Sustainability and Resilience
OCTANE - Innovation for Sustainability Breakfast
2024-05-03
Digital Tools for Projecting Coastal Flooding and Erosion
Spotlight on Science Program
2024-05-15
Research Grants
Multi-Objective Assessment of Flood Adaptation Options in Los Angeles County
NOAA
9/1/2023–8/30/2025
Capistrano Bight Shoreline Dynamics Investigation
City of Dana Point
8/12023–4/30/2024
Fostering Systems Thinking in High School Environmental Engineering through Engagement of Coastal Communities
NSF
9/9/2023–8/31/2027
Articles
National‐scale flood hazard data unfit for urban risk management
Earth's Future2024
Extreme flooding events are becoming more frequent and costly, and impacts have been concentrated in cities where exposure and vulnerability are both heightened. To manage risks, governments, the private sector, and households now rely on flood hazard data from national‐scale models that lack accuracy in urban areas due to unresolved drainage processes and infrastructure. Here we assess the uncertainties of First Street Foundation (FSF) flood hazard data, available across the U.S., using a new model (PRIMo‐Drain) that resolves drainage infrastructure and fine resolution drainage dynamics. Using the case of Los Angeles, California, we find that FSF and PRIMo‐Drain estimates of population and property value exposed to 1%‐ and 5%‐annual‐chance hazards diverge at finer scales of governance, for example, by 4‐ to 18‐fold at the municipal scale.
Estimating post‐fire flood infrastructure clogging and overtopping hazards
Water Resources Research2024
Cycles of wildfire and rainfall produce sediment‐laden floods that pose a hazard to development and may clog or overtop protective infrastructure, including debris basins and flood channels. The compound, post‐fire flood hazards associated with infrastructure overtopping and clogging are challenging to estimate due to the need to account for interactions between sequences of wildfire and storm events and their impact on flood control infrastructure over time. Here we present data sources and calibration methods to estimate infrastructure clogging and channel overtopping hazards on a catchment‐by‐catchment basis using the Post‐Fire Flood Hazard Model (PF2HazMo), a stochastic modeling approach that utilizes continuous simulation to resolve the effects of antecedent conditions and system memory.
How urban form impacts flooding
Nature Communications2024
Urbanization and climate change are contributing to severe flooding globally, damaging infrastructure, disrupting economies, and undermining human well-being. Approaches to make cities more resilient to floods are emerging, notably with the design of flood-resilient structures, but relatively little is known about the role of urban form and its complexity in the concentration of flooding. We leverage statistical mechanics to reduce the complexity of urban flooding and develop a mean-flow theory that relates flood hazards to urban form characterized by the ground slope, urban porosity, and the Mermin order parameter which measures symmetry in building arrangements. The mean-flow theory presents a dimensionless flood depth that scales linearly with the urban porosity and the order parameter, with different scaling for disordered square- and hexagon-like forms.
Flooding is not like filling a bath
Earth's Future2024
Damage and disruption from flooding have rapidly escalated over recent decades. Knowing who and what is at risk, how these risks are changing, and what is driving these changes is of immense importance to flood management and policy. Accurate predictions of flood risk are also critical to public safety. However, many high‐profile research studies reporting risks at national and global scales rely upon a significant oversimplification of how floods behave—as a level pool—an approach known as bathtub modeling that is avoided in flood management practice due to known biases (e.g., >200% error in flood area) compared to physics‐based modeling. With publicity by news media, findings that would likely not be trusted by flood management professionals are thus widely communicated to policy makers and the public, scientific credibility is put at risk, and maladaptation becomes more likely.
Satellite-based vertical land motion for infrastructure monitoring: a prototype roadmap in Greater Houston, Texas
Scientific Reports2025
Coastal regions are critical hubs for industries reliant on transport and storage. However, vital infrastructure including above-ground storage tanks (ASTs), which store hazardous materials, is vulnerable to flooding and often exacerbated by subsidence (negative vertical land motion; VLM). The US Environmental Protection Agency plays a key role in mitigating risks from ASTs. Satellite remote sensing provides a powerful tool to assess hazards and inform decision-making. Here, we present a roadmap for integrating remotely-sensed observations into decision-making frameworks. Using NASA observational products for end-users from remote sensing analysis (OPERA) VLM products derived from Sentinel-1, we map VLM at~ 30 m resolution across Greater Houston–Galveston.