Overview of the research projectCritical infrastructure (CI), such as electricity and transportation systems, are the backbone of our society. When natural hazards strike, the importance of these systems becomes apparent: a disruption of a single CI service can quickly result in a knock-on effect on households, companies, and other CI systems, thereby causing wide-spread impacts on society. For this PhD position, you will work on research leading to a PhD thesis related to modelling the wider economic impacts as a result of critical infrastructure failure due to both single natural hazards and multi-hazard events (i.e., compound and cascading events).
The position entails: (i) understanding the dependencies between infrastructure networks and the economic system, (ii) explicitly modelling the temporal and spatial economic impacts of natural hazards, (iii) developing a risk framework in which we can assess adaptation strategies on various levels within our society (e.g. asset, network and society) and (iv) developing this within a multi-hazard setting.
Methods include network modelling, macroeconomic modelling, such as input-output and computable generable equilibrium modelling, and geospatial analysis to explicitly couple physical natural hazard events to infrastructure networks and economic activity. The candidate is expected to make scientific advancements in understanding the spatial and temporal dimensions of critical infrastructure failures and its cascading effects towards people and businesses.
This research is part of the Horizon Europe Multi-hazard Infrastructure Risk Assessment for Climate Adaptation (MIRACA) project. The work will be carried out at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM). The candidate will work in close collaboration with the MIRACA consortium partners. Our institute and the MIRACA consortium value diversity, we therefore especially encourage applications from women and other groups traditionally under-represented in the discipline.
Your duties
- writing a PhD thesis consisting of 4 scientific papers
- working with colleagues of the project consortium and contributing to project reporting
- contributing to the teaching activities of IVM