Our personal member and former board member – Prof. Dr. Annegret Thieken – has been awarded the 2025 Plinius Medal by the European Geosciences Union (EGU)!
This prestigious award recognizes her outstanding contributions to interdisciplinary natural hazards research, particularly to improving the understanding of flood risks, their societal impacts, and the development of adaptation and risk reduction strategies. Prof. Dr. Annegret Thieken is a leading scientist in this field, known for her ability to integrate teams with interdisciplinary perspectives. Among her significant contributions, she played a key role in analyzing the warnings during the July 2021 floods as well as the long-term health impacts of flooding.
Since 2011, she has been a professor of Geography and Natural Hazards Research at the University of Potsdam, where she leads research projects focused on water-related risks, particularly flood damage analysis, heat stress, crisis and risk communication to strengthen resilience, and adaptation strategies – most recently within the framework of the BMBF funding initiative WaX – Water Extreme Events. In the ExTrass project, she collaborated with the City of Potsdam to develop concrete measures for dealing with heat and heavy rainfall in urban areas. These efforts resulted in, among other things, green infrastructure concepts for the districts of Drewitz and Schlaatz and recommendations for addressing extreme weather in daycare centers and nursing homes. Her work extends far beyond academia: Knowledge transfer to practice and policy plays a central role in many of her projects. Materials, guidelines, and tools from her research are made publicly available, as seen in the BMBF project KAHR – Climate Adaptation, Flooding, and Resilience.
The Plinius Medal was presented to Prof. Dr. Annegret Thieken on April 29, 2025, during the EGU General Assembly in Vienna. We warmly congratulate her on this well-deserved recognition!
Read the full article in German language here.
(Image Source: Tobias Hopfgarten)