Project background
Urban resilience treats cities as integrated social-ecological systems capable of absorbing and adapting to disturbance while retaining essential structure and functions. Heavy rainfall and floods are among the most significant external disturbances faced by cities, and the magnitude and frequency of these extreme hazard events are likely to increase due to climate change. Urban resilience to flooding concerns a range of dimensions, including physical and environmental factors such as precipitation and land-use/ land-cover, socio-economic factors such as institutions and governance regimes, and technical factors such as early warning systems and information sharing tools. A holistic evaluation of resilience requires addressing the entire disaster process from preparedness and response to recovery, mitigation, and adaption, and considering multiple aspects of systemic resilience, including absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities. Although many methods and initiatives have been developed to understand urban resilience to flooding and other natural or human-induced hazards, challenges remain in quantifying the complex and multifaceted notion of resilience to craft adaptation strategies for future flood management and governance. However, the recent advances in flood simulation modelling, systems analysis, risk assessment, sensing networks, and data science have offered new opportunities for assessing urban resilience to flooding under change.
Project aims
This project aims to assess urban resilience to flooding of a number of cities across regions to support decision making and adaptation strategies for the future. The aim will be achieved through the following activities.
• Develop an integrated and widely applicable framework for assessing urban resilience to flooding.
• Integrate the resilience concept with technical methods such as high-resolution flood simulation and flood risk assessment.
• Assess and compare urban resilience to flooding in multiple cities across regions, such as the UK, China, and other places, dependent on the student’s experience and interest (candidate cities could be selected from the well-established Resilient Cities Network: https://resilientcitiesnetwork.org/).
• Understand the impact of flooding on various urban sectors, such as transportation, building, and human activities.
• Predict and analyse the dynamics of urban resilience in different scenarios.
• Support decision making for improving urban resilience to flood risk in the future.
Candidate requirements
The project is looking for candidates with good degrees in environmental science, geography, hydrology, engineering, data sciences or other relevant subjects. Experience in flood simulation and assessment is desirable. The successful applicant will work in an interdisciplinary environment to develop skills in physical, social, and technical domains to address urban flooding challenges.
Project partners
This project is built upon the collaboration between Dr Feng Mao from Cardiff University and Prof Dawei Han from the University of Bristol. They will supervise the project with their complementary expertise. Dr Mao is an interdisciplinary water scientist with research interests in socio-hydrological resilience, international development, and environmental monitoring and governance; and Prof Han is an experienced water engineer with extensive experience in hydroinformatics, real-time flood forecasting, and flood risk management.
Training
Training in scientific knowledge, research expertise, and transferable skills will be facilitated by supervision at Cardiff University and supported by the University of Bristol. The Cabot Institute at Bristol offers regular workshops in environmental risks that will benefit the candidate. There will be opportunities for the successful candidate to collaborate with external experts, visit international partners, and conduct fieldwork overseas.
Entry requirements
In order to be accepted you would need to have a first-class BSc degree or a second-class degree plus an MSc or good MSci. However, for international students, you would need to have a relevant degree in the subject area and have evidence of an English Language qualification. Further information on the English Language can be found here: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/international/english-language-requirements/postgraduate
How to apply
In order to formally apply for the PhD you will need to go to the following web page: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/programmes/programme/earth-sciences
In the black box on the right of the page please select the following options:
·Doctor of Philosophy
·Full Time
·1st October 2022
Click on ‘Apply now’.
Please ensure that you include the ‘Project Title’ you are applying for and supervisor and that you add ‘NERC DTP’ under the source of funding.
The application deadline is Monday 10 January 2022 at 2359 GMT. Interviews will take place from 23rd February to 9th March 2022. For more information about the NERC GW4+ Doctoral Training Partnership please visit https://www.nercgw4plus.ac.uk.
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