PhD Studentship: Building Proactive Climate Resilience into Critical Infrastructure Assets

Critical transport infrastructure, play a key role for the seamless functioning of our societies. Several assets are approaching the end of their design life, whereas at the same time are subjected to ever-increasing traffic loads and natural hazards that are aggravated by climate change. To address this issue, there is an urgent need for policy makers and stakeholders to take imminent and informed decisions as to where, the often-limited available budget, needs to be directed and what sort of interventions need to be implemented to restore and maintain the resilience of the interdependent transport assets at an acceptable level. This process requires, among others, (a) identification of the most critical assets within a transport network, (b) assessment of their current condition, (c) evaluation of their resilience in the “as-is” state and (d) resilience enhancement for different proactive/restoration measures.

The main scope of this PhD is to develop a practical methodology for enabling a resilience-informed proactive restoration roadmap in transport networks. To accomplish this goal, detailed and surrogate finite elements models will be developed for the critical transport assets to allow the generation of a set of representative/class fragilities for a portfolio of transport assets. The class fragilities will then enable the identification of the most vulnerable assets/locations in a transport network and the identification of the proactive measures.

Candidate essential and desired skill set:

• Finite Element Modelling
• Understanding of resilience
• Uncertainty treatment
• Programming skills

Deadline for applications (see steps 1-4 below need to be completed by): 25 February 2024

Roadmap of your application:

1. Send a 2-page CV to S.A.Mitoulis@Bham.ac.uk stating if you are a home or international student and if you are looking for a scholarship or you are self-funded. In your CV, please add a link to your LinkedIn, Google Scholar and/or Scopus account. The supervisor writes back to you within 3 days.
2. Apply on SITS portal https://sits.bham.ac.uk/lpages/EPS015.htm
3. Supervisor assesses your application.
4. An interview is arranged if your case is strong*
5. If you are selected after the interview, the supervisor requests an offer letter to be sent to you.
6. With the offer letter you can then apply for the EPSRC DT Scholarship scheme OR Self fund your studies.
7. If you are applying for the EPSRC DT Scholarship you will have to work on the application with your supervisor to submit your application by the 15th of March 2024, 17:00.
8. If you are self-funded, you can start your PhD whenever is convenient.
9. Full time commitment is expected from candidates that will be applying for the EPSRC DT Scholarship scheme. Part time will only be considered for self-funded PhD students.

*If you are international student you will have to obtain an ATAS immediately after step 4 and if the supervisor gave you positive feedback

Funding notes:

• Applicants may obtain funding from the School of Engineering or have their own funding to cover the fees and living expenses.
• EPSRC Doctoral Training Programme PhD studentships cover the home tuition fee and stipend.
• A salary top-up is possible for competitive candidates.

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