ERIK PASCHE

It was with great sadness that the Buoyant Foundation Project team learned of the untimely death of Professor Erik Pasche of Hamburg, Germany, on November 30, 2010.  Erik was 55.  He was an eloquent plenary speaker at the 2010 Building Resilience Workshop, where he demonstrated the effectiveness of cascading levees in combination with temporary floodwalls and other non-structural building adaptations in providing superior flood protection to urban areas.

Erik had more than 25 years of research experience in the field of hydrodynamics, hydrological modeling, flood management and experimental research in the field of hydroinformatics.  His research was used in the development of flood information systems and flood defense techniques, such as cascading levees, movable walls, retrofitting of existing buildings, breakwater design, and river restoration strategies.  He was a guiding force in both the international CORFU (Collaborative Research on Flood Resilience in Urban Areas) project, a comparative case study of the flood risk management strategies in use in three European and five Asian cities; and the pan-European SMARTeST (Smart Resilience Technology, Systems and Tools) project involving the collaboration of ten European research institutes in the development of innovative Flood Resilient (FRe) technology.  Erik made a significant contribution to his field, and the many projects and initiatives in which he played a role will certainly suffer his loss.

Erik's participation was a critical force in the success of the Building Resilience Workshop I, and we were anticipating no less of the contribution he planned to make to the BRW II.  We are fortunate that his students are carrying on his work, and will be with us at the BRW II to speak about the research projects they started under Erik’s direction and are continuing to develop.  Yet, we will sorely miss the energy, humor, music and good will that flowed, seemingly without effort, from “the little man with the big impact."