ONE Planet DTP - Real-time data to manage urban environmental risks (OP20216)

High concentrations of people in urban areas concentrate impacts from extreme weather, climate change and environmental risks. These include poor air quality, heatwaves amplified by the urban heat island and surface water flooding. The heterogeneity of urban areas means that these risks are spatially and temporally complex and traditional monitoring is unable to provide the resolution needed to understand them.

This PhD will use data from Newcastle University’s world-leading Urban Observatory (www.uoweb3.ncl.ac.uk; ww.urbanobservatory.ac.uk) and develop big data analytics and cloud computing techniques to understand the impacts of environmental risks in urban areas. The research will analyse and integrate traditional (e.g. rain gauges) and non-traditional data (e.g. CCTV, social media feeds) to improve understanding of environmetal processes in urban areas, and their impacts –for example, how a flood event disrupts transport networks, or how the built environment form influences the local urban heat island. You will couple real time data analysis, with modelling of environmental risks and methods to visualise and communicate these to relevant stakeholders. Applications could include environmental risks such as air pollution, heatwaves, floods or other risks the Urban Observatory monitors.

The PhD will benefit from close links to the UK network of Urban Observatories that Newcastle Univesrity lead, as well as Newcastle City Council, other community, industry and public bodies interested in the potential of smart cities and urban observation in managing environmental risks.