Integrating social and environmental pathways into long-term planning for co-benefits of climate change adaptation

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. Future global scale climate change scenarios until recently have focused on separate progression of Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). However, since 2019 there has been a strong effort to bring the SSP-RCP together in a single framework to consider societal and environmental pathways in parallel.

Risks associated with flooding are expected to rise with climate change as the frequency and intensity of storm events may increase. The City of Glasgow and the river catchments that arrive there are vulnerable to flooding. 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 project will take an exploratory modelling approach to quantifying expected hazard mitigation associated with a range of potential nature-based flood interventions. The work will develop new models of the hydrology and hydrodynamics of the Clyde region, as well as building on existing modelling conducted by partner, Fairhurst. The approach will bring together climate adaptation options, existing and future land-use, policy planning and societal and ecological needs to take a multi-perspective outlook in considering potential flood risk interventions. 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 numerical modelling of physical, social economic and/or ecological systems, perhaps with particular focus on water environments. Skills in Geographical Information Science, quantitative and qualitative data science, statistics and machine learning will also be of benefit. They will demonstrate the capability to work across ecological and societal frameworks to improve the integration and regional applicability of design scenarios.

We champion Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, believing that this is the way to increase research productivity and quality and to enhance societal and economic impact. Likewise, the University of Glasgow and our external partners are fully committed to EDI principles.

We support applications from under-represented backgrounds, childcare support for conference attendance, flexible working for carers and promote a work-life balance.

For enquires related to EDI, please address to GALLANT EDI Champion, Dr Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay via the GALLANT-phd mailbox.

 To be classed as a UK/Home applicant, candidates must meet the following criteria:

• Be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or

• Have settled status, or

• Have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or

• Have indefinite leave to remain or enter.

All applicants must have or expect to obtain a first-class degree (2.1 or equivalent) in an appropriate discipline. This may cover, but is not limited to, earth sciences, social science, mathematics, engineering, computing, physics, bio- and chemical sciences.

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].