Identifying co-benefits of different nature-based solutions to improve flood and erosion resilience of the River Clyde and its estuary

Identifying potential co-benefits to addressing the impacts of anthropogenic climate change could allow climate change adaptation to occur more promptly and efficiently, and with wider benefits for economies and communities. Flood resilience and mitigation efforts that favour a working with nature approach have the potential to transform rural and urban flood risk while providing economic, social and ecological co-benefits. Sitting within the Climate Adaptation Work Package of the GALLANT project, this PhD will focus on investigating the co-benefits of nature-based flood protection options on the river networks draining into the Clyde Estuary. The PhD student will use results of exploratory nature-based solutions flood with physical geography, ecology and biogeomorphological monitoring of greening the grey and hybrid nature-based solutions in London and Glasgow, UK to assess the full range of ecosystem and social services these features provide. These data, along with flood modelling results, climate adaptation options, existing and future land-use and planning policy will be used to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of actual and potential nature-based flood risk interventions. It will also explore innovative economic policy changes that could transform environmental economics appraisals of these measures, to better account for future benefits by exploring how adjustments to the Treasury’s Green Book discounting metrics can better estimate future cost-benefit ratios of estuarine and fluvial adaptation options.

Working with the Systems Science workstream and across all the work packages in GALLANT, and project partners (e.g. Glasgow City Council), the PhD will use a whole-systems approach to develop a hierarchical quantitative framework for decision making in the face of multiple stakeholder interests. This will integrate environmental, economic and societal concerns/benefits for use by policy makers to inform new approaches to governance.

The successful candidate for this post will ideally demonstrate skills and experience in physical and/or environmental geography, or urban estuarine or fluvial ecosystems, with strong interests in and numerical capabilities for environmental economics assessments. Skills in Geographical Information Science, quantitative and qualitative data science and statistics will also be of benefit. They will demonstrate the capability to work across ecological, geomorphological and societal frameworks to improve the integration of these data for understanding costs-benefits of nature-based solutions for improving climate resilience.

The topic and funding for this PhD are confirmed.

How to Apply: Please refer to the following website for details on how to apply: https://www.gla.ac.uk/gallant. For studentship enquiries, please contact [Email Address Removed].