Eurizon.eu

Organization: IRPI (Research Institute for Hydro-Geological Protection)

Location: Perugia, Italy

Field: Global Change

Requirements:

Recently obtained M.Sc. or 4-yr diploma degree in earth sciences, Civil Engineering, or other relevant discipline. Candidates with backgrounds in hazard assessment, risk modeling, and interest in statistical modeling are strongly encouraged to apply. Interest in quantitative earth sciences and in mountain environments are also recommended. Experience in programming language (e.g. Matlab, R, IDL), knowledge of GIS and use of Linux OS are recommended. Ability to speak one or more of the following languages: Italian, French, Romanian, Polish is recommended. It is expected, that the candidate will participate in all meetings and workshops organized by the CHANGES research consortium – related additional funding will be available. The candidate must also be willing to disseminate the results within the project during the meetings, but also and in particular through presentations at conferences and contributions to scientific journals. Frequent interaction with other researchers in the CHANGES network and an attitude for scientific inter-disciplinary research are important.

Abstract:

A Ph.D. position, financed by the European Community, is available within the European Marie Curie Initial Training Network “CHANGES”. The CHANGES network (Changing Hydro-meteorological Risks – as Analyzed by a New Generation of European Scientists) will develop an advanced understanding of how global changes (related to environmental and climate change as well as socio-economical change) will affect the temporal and spatial patterns of hydro-meteorological hazards and associated risks in Europe; how these changes can be assessed, modeled, and incorporated in sustainable risk management strategies, focusing on spatial planning, emergency preparedness and risk communication

Description:

Background : The objective of the contract is to develop, design and test a tool for probabilistic risk assessment of hydro-meteorological hazard, using statistical models. A multi-hazard approach, including flooding and landslide hazards, should be applied depending on the local situation of the test areas. The research will focus mainly on flooding and landslide risk assessments, at different scales and in different geological and environmental settings.

Objectives:
This work will include the following tasks:
• Evaluation of different models for landslide and flood risk assessment at regional scale in diverse physiographic settings. Detailed analysis will be performed to define the environmental and the thematic data required for the models.
• Analysis of triggering factors, and expressing these in frequency-magnitude curves, incorporating the effects of future climate changes, and changes in land use, land cover and socio-economic development.
• Different approaches for risk assessment should be exploited (e.g. event tree modelling, frequency-magnitude analysis, joint probability of flood and landslide events) and test in possibly four study areas, located in Italy, Poland, France and Romania. These include urban areas with a combination of landslide and flood hazard as well as mountainous area with expected land use changes.
• The landslide and flood hazard and risk models will be related to regional or national rainfall thresholds analysis.
• Definition of best practices for PRA suitable for different social, economical, physical etc. (in other words “environmental”) settings. Cross correlation between type of available data and different environmental settings should be performed.
• An important task will be the formalization and the organization of the datasets in order to integrate the results in a Web portal.

The position is a research-only post, with no teaching obligations. CNR will provide substantial support in a stimulating environment, and we expect the successful candidate to undertake high quality original research in his/her specific field.

Location: The candidate will be based for 36 months at the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (CNR-IRPI, Italy) both in Perugia and in Padova. At least five months of secondment are scheduled at ITC, Enschede (The Netherland) and at ERN, Barcelona (Spain) as part of the transfer of knowledge activities within the network.

Supervision: The Ph.D will be formally supervised by Dr. Alessandro Pasuto and Dr. Paola Reichenbach at CNR-IRPI of Padova and Perugia respectively, and by Dr. Cees Van Westen at ITC. The PhD can be enrolled in the PhD graduate school of the University of Twente. The Ph.D. thesis will be submitted in English.

Deadline: 01-04-2011

Contacts:

Link: http://www.irpi.cnr.it/

Link: http://www.itc.nl/changes

Email: Paola.Reichenbach@irpi.cnr.it

Email: alessandro.pasuto@irpi.cnr.it

Phone number: +39 075.501.4413/430

If you apply for this position please say you saw it on eurizons.eu