Iowa Flood Center researcher takes work overseas with Fulbright award

Kate Giannini spent a lot of her youth in Iowa City outdoors, playing in creeks and exploring nature. In high school and college, she enrolled in environmental classes and found inspiration to pursue the sciences.

That led Giannini to her current job as program manager for the Iowa Flood Center — IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering in the University of Iowa’s College of Engineering. There, she works to enhance flood resilience across the state.

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Recently, her work with the Iowa Flood Center has sent her out of Iowa, and even out of the country.

Giannini was selected for the Fulbright Specialist Program award, which includes six weeks in the Netherlands to continue her environmental and flood resilience work.

Giannini is one of 400 U.S. citizens selected for the program each year to share their expertise with other research institutions across the global.

The program is run through the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which is housed within the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

First few days abroad

After applying for a spot in the program in 2024, Giannini said she was “really surprised to be accepted.”

“I was really excited about it,” she said.

Giannini arrived in the Netherlands Dec. 31, and will fly back to Iowa on Feb. 8 — marking about 42 days working with and learning from other researchers from around the world.

After adjusting to the seven-hour time difference, she started work with the flood risk management and climate adaptation teams at Deltares, an independent Dutch research institute that focuses on field water and subsurface research.

Giannini said her first two weeks of work were comparable to starting a new job.

“It's been really exciting just to hear how excited they are for me to be here,” she said. “I'm equally excited just to learn from (other researchers) about all the different tools and technology that they have.

Years ago, Giannini traveled to Ukraine to experience a different culture, but her time in the Netherlands is the first time she’s been out of the country for work.

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Bringing global flood tools home

During her time in the Netherlands, Giannini will be working with other researchers to create a planning tool that helps communities decide where to place flood mitigation projects to reduce flooding.

So far, this tool has been used in several European countries and in one U.S. city.

“It's really a model that's been set up for coastal communities, so my goal with this Fulbright is to see if we can apply that to the flood adapt model to a project or a community in Iowa, in the Upper Mississippi Basin, on a riverine community,” Giannini said.

She said UI has worked with Deltares in the past as well.

“They also are interested in what we are doing at the Iowa Flood Center and how that could also be a future collaboration,” she said. “It's an outcome that we're definitely looking to explore further how we can continue this partnership beyond the Fulbright program.”

Giannini said the Iowa communities that could use this tool in the coming years will be chosen based on several factors, including whether the city or county is willing to partner with IIHR for the project.

Some areas around the state she is considering for the project include Dubuque County near Catfish Creek; Spencer in northwest Iowa, which Giannini said was heavily affected by flooding in 2024; Columbus Junction where the Iowa and Cedar rivers meet; and Riverdale near the Quad Cities, which has experienced flash flooding.

As of now, Giannini said she and her team are leaning toward implementing the tool in Columbus Junction because it would be a “good area to build out the flood planning tool.”

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When Giannini found out she’d been accepted to the program and would be focusing on flood resilience — an issue that’s familiar to Iowans — she said her colleagues at UI were supportive.

“My colleagues are excited that I have this opportunity to go abroad and get different work and life experiences and bring that back to the Iowa Flood Center,” she said. “A lot of them have worked with Deltares staff in the past, so there's a good relationship there. We're eager to continue that momentum and continue that partnership as we go forward.”

A similar ‘altered’ landscape

Giannini said she believes it is important to have a “global view” of environmental and climate issues, ranging from flooding to water quality issues and beyond.

Like Iowa’s ongoing issues with water quality, Giannini said water contamination is very prevalent in the Netherlands as well.

“There's a lot of similarities between Iowa and Netherlands. The Netherlands is probably three times smaller than Iowa, but it's a very altered landscape. It's 6 to 7 meters below sea level, and there's canals and major water infrastructure everywhere, and it reminds me a lot of how much we have altered Iowa as well,” she said. “We can learn a lot from each other.”

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. She is also a contributing writer for the Ag and Water Desk, an independent journalism collaborative focusing on the Mississippi River Basin.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com