IHE Delft Institute for Water Education seeks a PhD research candidate to conduct research in understanding floods and drought processes at different scales and assess the socio-economic impacts to formulate the interventions and reduce the knowledge gap. This research is part of a research project ”RESTARTin” funded by the Dutch Scientific Organisation (NWO).

In this PhD research the candidate will work with several Dutch and Indian organisations involved in the RESTARTin project. In this project, an integrated modelling framework with flood and drought models will be developed at multiple selected pockets of all pilot study sites in the Netherlands and in India to bridge the gap in the comprehensive understanding of the catchment processes.

The candidate will work primarily at IHE, in collaboration with Wageningen University and Research and other Dutch practising organisations. Case studies will be primarily from the Netherlands. The candidate also needs to collaborate with the Indian partners in the project (universities and research organisations) who will be engaged in somewhat similar research lines with case studies from India.

The PhD researcher will be hosted by the Hydroinformatics and Socio-technical Innovations Department of IHE Delft.

The PhD researcher will be supervised by Biswa Bhattacharya, Chris Zevenbergen and William Veerbeek, and also be registered at Delft University of Technology.

Responsibilities

• This PhD research will contribute to the development of integrated modelling of floods and droughts.
• The PhD researcher will contribute, where needed lead, to the preparation and reporting of a number of deliverables of the RESTARTin project.
• The PhD researcher will participate in project meetings.
• The PhD researcher will publish the obtained results in peer reviewed journals, which will contribute to the final PhD thesis.
• The PhD researcher will present the project results at national and international conferences and symposia.
• The PhD researcher will mentor MSc theses which are linked to this PhD research.
• The PhD candidate will write and successfully defend a PhD thesis.

•  MSc (or an equivalent) degree in hydrology, hydraulics, hydroinformatics or a comparable discipline.
• Knowledge about floods and droughts; understanding of fundamental principles of flood and drought risk management; experience in mathematical modelling of water systems (hydrological modelling and hydraulic modelling); programming skills (preferably in Python, the need of programming skills is primarily related to accessing/ downloading various data sources).
• English language proficiency (written and spoken).
• Willingness to mentor thesis research of MSc students.
• Independence, critical attitude and team work.
• Readiness to work in a multi-cultural work environment.
• Willingness to travel although a lot of travel is not anticipated.

Fixed-term contract: 4 years.

This is a position for 48 months (4 years), (38 hours per week), with the expectation that the candidate will submit and successfully defend the PhD thesis within this period. The candidate will be stationed in Delft, the Netherlands. Employment at IHE Delft is according to the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities (scale P). The appointment implies entry into the Netherlands' Civil Service Pension Fund (ABP).

The initial contract is for 18 months. Within the first year a go/no-go decision will be made based on a detailed PhD research proposal to be developed by the candidate, which will determine whether or not the contract will be extended.