Jim Hall is Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks in the University of Oxford. Prof Hall is internationally recognized for his research on risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty for water resource systems, flood and coastal risk management, infrastructure systems and adaptation to climate change. Professor Hall is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology and is Expert Advisor to the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission. He is Chair of the Science Advisory Committee of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). He was a member of the UK independent Committee on Climate Change Adaptation from 2009 to 2019.

Prof Hall’s group in the University of Oxford is at the forefront of risk analysis of climatic extremes and their impacts on infrastructure networks and economic systems, from local to global scales. He led the development of the National Infrastructure Systems Model (NISMOD), which was used for the UK’s first National Infrastructure Assessment and for analysis of the resilience of energy, transport, digital and water networks in Great Britain. His systems analysis methods have been applied worldwide, including in Argentina, China, Curacao, Ghana, St Lucia, Tanzania, and Vietnam. He has published four books, including, The Future of National Infrastructure: A System-of-Systems Approach, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016.