DR MD ABU SYED

Dr. Syed is the Managing Director of C4RE (Centre for Research Environment and People) Ltd. (private research and consulting house), Senior Fellow of Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), Founding Director of NABIC - with over 30 years of experiences from field level to multi-country/institutions research and piloting programs on climate modeling, climate and environmental risks, assessment, participatory investment planning, adaptation and resilience master plan, program development and execution.

Dr. Syed’s researches have focused on numerical atmospheric/climate, grid-based hydrologic, geospatial modelling of ecosystems, water resources at regional and national levels, hydrogeologic analysis GBM basins, regions of flash flood and landslide susceptibility, relative sea level and salinity intrusion and ingression modelling, water-related natural disasters, and flood hazard, vulnerability and risk analysis. He prioritizes soft-flood risk/adaptive flood risk management with nature-based solutions (regenerative agriculture, permaculture and optimizing hard engineering interventions. He is collaborating with International institutes on scaling up “sponge city” concept of urban flood risk/water logging management in ten municipalities in Bangladesh.

Some of the on-going and planned activities in current research projects include experiments on potential impacts of SRM (Solar Reflection Modification/Methods) intervention on hydrogeologic aquifer systems and groundwater flow/transport modelling. These are to assess the flood frequency/depth/duration and extent, environmental scenario generation, using grid-based hydrologic models for the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basins for generating inflows to the country under different climate change and upstream – downstream linkages water resources interventions and transboundary water governance scenarios. It is together with the use of fine scale national model analysing the impacts on flood hazards and water availability with in-country interventions, revision of flood danger levels for important rivers, and prepared flood hazard, vulnerability and risk maps for different types of flooding in different hydrological zones (via 1D/2D flood flow simulation, flood damage assessments, etc. and extensive field investigations and community engagements).

Dr. Syed contributed to the revision of Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCSAP) and formulation of National Adaptation Plan (NAP) – Bangladesh where he served as Lead Author for three Chapters.  Dr. Syed developed Environmental Management Guidelines for different sectors for Department of Environment, Govt. of Bangladesh. He uses earth observation and geospatial sciences for adaptation and resilience participatory planning, land use and land cover, DRR and in all his works. He still recalls taking first step in promulgating Amiree Decree declaring Al-Dhakira mangrove as Nature Park and first ever protected area in Qatar. It started from a simple family trip after which he advocated to the university and SCENR, Qatar authorities to declare it as protected area with all assessments and guidelines. For this he had to start from ground “0” and raising resources ($21 million) for assessment, finally it was declared as Nature Park in 2006. He worked with ERD (as NDA), IDCOL and PKSF (as NIA) in developing several projects for GCF support.

Dr. Syed possesses vast expertise in teaching and supervising research students in environment and climate risks; and geospatial science, adaptation, ecosystem and climate modeling, community based early warning, disaster risk reduction, “sponge city”, SDGs, policy analysis and formulation, and GHG emission for different industrial sectors at different universities in Bangladesh, China, Europe and the USA.

Dr. Syed has collaborative works with many national and international institutions including the Nansen Environment and remote sensing Centre (NERSC), Bergen, Norway; Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research; Nansen-Zhu International Research Center (NZC), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thuyloi University, Vietnam; University of Twente, Wagenigen University, Netherlands, Max Plant Institute, Germany and Bergen University, Norway, Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, UNDP, ICIMOD, IFPRI, FAO, European Commission, IOM, IDRC, DFID, USAID etc. He also worked with private sector in the areas of Climate & Flood Resilient Housing, renewable energy, dairy and poultry waste to energy etc. He has many publications in peer reviewed books, journals and book chapters, popular articles or Op-Ed on environment, climate, adaptation, and forestry, remote sensing, GIS, food security, NRM and cost benefit of adaptation.