Research Assistant/Research Officer

Salary: £30,046 to £33,797 or £34,804 to £40,322 per annum together with USS pension benefits

Location: Singleton Campus

Contract: This is a fixed term position until 31/12/2023 (with potential for extension)

Applications are invited for the post of Research Assistant/Research Officer in Physical Geography, Department of Geography in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

We are seeking to appoint a researcher on an ongoing NERC funded research project “Advancing 3D Fuel Mapping for Wildfire Behaviour and Risk Mitigation Modelling”. The project is led by Prof. Stefan Doerr at Swansea University and carried out in collaboration with the US Forest Service (USA), Forest Research (UK) and Natural Resources Wales (UK). The project aims to (i) develop new algorithms to obtain accurate 3D fuel cartography in forest plots using terrestrial point clouds, (ii) generate an operative workflow to integrate the 3D fuel cartography into physics-based fire behaviour models, (iii) implement a methodology to create virtual forest scenarios simulating different forest treatments from real data, and (iv) disseminate the project outcomes to both the scientific community and end-users.

The successful applicant will join Swansea University’s award winning Centre for Wildfire Research. The centre’s mission is to provide society with the knowledge necessary to predict, mitigate and adapt to the increasing threat of wildfires both in the UK and globally.

The appointed researcher will support the second and applied phase of this project, lasting until at least until 31. Dec. 2023. This phase will focus specifically on the optimisation of the current versions of the algorithms already developed within the project and their implementation into R and Python scripts/packages that can be published in public repositories.  Specific duties involve (i) optimising algorithms already developed within the project, (ii) implementing them in R and Python libraries/scripts/packages, (iii) contributing to the inclusion of 3D fuel cartography into existing fire behaviour models and (iv) contributing to the application of the fuel and fire behaviour models to different virtual treatment scenarios.

Applicants are expected to have a degree or PhD in a relevant discipline (e.g. Geography, Computer Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, Geomatics, Forestry, Environmental Sciences) and expertise in programming/coding (R and Python). Experience relevant to the use of terrestrial point clouds, forest inventory and fire behaviour models, as well as in the dissemination of scientific work are beneficial.

Closing Date: 11pm 28th June 2022

Shortlisting: 1/7/2022

Interview: 8/7/2022

It is anticipated that interviews will take place in July 2022 with a start date of 1 August 2022 or as soon as possible thereafter. Informal enquiries may be made to Prof. Stefan Doerr s.doerr@swansea.ac.uk  +44 7788716866 or Dr Cristina Santin c.santin@swansea.ac.uk

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