PhD Studentship: Climate change adaptation for urban and interdependent critical infrastructure systems

Funding for: Home/EU/Overseas

Funding amount: Minimum £17,668 subject to eligibility status and confirmation of award

Hours: Full time

Contract: temporary

Closing date: 31 January 2023

Project Title: Climate change adaptation for urban and interdependent critical infrastructure systems

The project:

The proposed project is aimed at investigating and developing new methodologies for climate change adaptation in urban environments, considering flooding and heat waves impact to infrastructure systems. Topics of interest include but are not limited to cascading impacts of disruptions to power and transportation infrastructure; risk assessment in terms of impact to the built environment (disruption to service, monetary loss); climate projections and associated impact to urban infrastructure; scenario planning of urban adaptation; urban resilience of tomorrow cities. The theoretical efforts are complemented by simulations and experimental validation in realistic scenarios, in which the baseline and adaptation scenarios will be evaluated comparatively.

This project supports and builds on the University’s disciplinary and interdisciplinary excellence in tackling global challenges relating to climate, energy, and infrastructure systems. It will be carried across the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, and School of Geographical Sciences. Supervisory support from across all three departments will ensure high quality and interdisciplinarity of the PhD outputs, as well as applicability to national resilience challenges. As an outcome, the successful candidate will also have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with existing networks of the supervisory team and the wider research community.  This project is one of the two vacancies available at the University of Bristol on the broader topic “Climate change adaptation and infrastructure”.

How to apply:

Prior to application, please contact one of the team: Dr Maria Pregnolato; Dr Laiz Souto; Dr Jeffrey Neal or Prof Paul Bates

To apply for this studentship, submit a PhD application using our online application system [www.bristol.ac.uk/pg-howtoapply]

Please ensure that in the Funding section you tick “I would like to be considered for a funding award from the Civil Engineering Department” and specify the title of the scholarship in the “other” box.

Candidate requirements: 

The candidate must hold/achieve a minimum of a master’s degree (or international equivalent) in an engineering, science, computing or mathematics discipline. Applicants without a master's qualification may be considered on an exceptional basis, provided they hold a first-class undergraduate degree.

Applicants should have excellent analytical skills, a strong background in numerical methods and computing, and experience with programming languages such as Python and MATLAB. 

A background understanding in one or more of the following: environmental science (e.g. climate change, urban adaptation), hydrology, geo-engineering would be desirable.

If English is not your first language, you need to meet this profile level:

Profile E

Further information about English language requirements and profile levels.

Funding:

The studentship will cover full tuition fees and a minimum stipend equivalent to the UKRI tax-free stipend of £17,668 per annum (22/23) for 4 years.

For eligibility and residence requirements please check the UKRI UK Research and Innovation website.

Contacts:  

For questions about eligibility and the application process please contact CAME Postgraduate Research Admissions 

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