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Organization: Instytut Rozwoju Miast

Location: Krakow, Poland

Field: Regional Geography

Requirements:

• Obtained M.Sc. diploma in the field of spatial planning or in geography with evident focus on spatial planning, less than 5 years ago.
• Good English
• Knowledge of Polish (at least reading) strongly recommended
• Knowledge of any of the following language is an asset: French, Italian, Romanian, German.
• Background knowledge of geomorphology and hydrology
• Ability to work with different sources of information: documents, maps, GIS, interviews;
It is expected, that the successful 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. Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply

Abstract:

An Early Stage Researcher/PhD 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: Hydro-meteorological risks: floods and landslides, are natural phenomena undergoing rules of physics whereas spatial planning and strategic environmental assessment (SEA), regardless of anybody’s intentions are political processes undergoing rules of social development. Legal procedures provide frameworks for these processes. SEA and spatial planning are two procedures within decision-making processes where the use of risk information is essential for diminishing losses in case when the real disaster occurs. Bearing in mind the importance of locally applied solutions the research would focus on local level of spatial planning in the selected study area in Polish Carpathians taking into account results of parallel research in 3 other study areas (French Alps, Italy, Romania). Basic research methods will be: document analysis, map analysis, interviews, site visits.

Objectives:
• to analyse legal frameworks of decision making processes, with particular emphasis on spatial planning and SEA, in countries participating in “Changes” network;
• to produce knowledge about ways in which risk information is used in spatial planning and SEA;
• to identify weak points of existing procedures;
• to formulate proposals of improvements for the assessment of risk as an integral part of SEA;
• to provide input (based on research in Poland) into the parallel ESR topic “Comparing Risk Governance Strategies for Different EU Countries”;
• to contribute within network activities to other ESR topics.

Location: The candidate will be based for 36 months at the Instytut Rozwoju Miast (IRM) located in Krakow, Poland. Within this period, the candidate will join for 5 months at Technische Universität Dortmund (TUDO) located in Dortmund, Germany, with the possibility to enroll the TUDO PhD programme; and 5 months at Risques & Development (R&D) located in Aubagne France for project-stated knowledge transfer activities.

Supervision: The research at IRM in Poland will be supervised by Wiktor Glowacki (MSc, researcher and urban planner from IRM Krakow); the PhD at TUDO will be supervised by Stefan Greiving (prof. Dr-Ing from TUDO); Eric Leroi (head of Risques & Developpement, France) will provide the supervision over the candidate’s research at R&D in France. The Ph.D. thesis will be submitted in English.

Deadline: 01-04-2011

Contacts:

Link: http://irm.krakow.pl/en/

Email: wglowacki@irm.krakow.pl

Phone number: +48 12 634-29-53

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