Jobs:Job-00400
Apply before: 22 July 2021
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Posting:
Position: PhD Scholarship
Apply before: 22 July 2021
|
Host university: University of Padova
Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
Research topic
The research will focus on the quantitative description of the intensity and impacts of storm events in coastal areas in the Italian north-east. The tools used will include deterministic and/or probabilistic modelling tools of ordinary and extreme events, remote sensing, and field observations. The processes studied, defined in a research plan developed with the advisor, may include rainfall and/or wind intensity within storm events (e.g. The Vaia storm of 2018) in areas located at increasing distance from the coast, storm surges due to wind and pressure gradients in the northern Adriatic sea, sediment transport in coastal zones and within lagoons in the same area. The impacts considered may include the implications of storms for the evolution of coastal environments, with specific reference to the destiny of the Venice lagoon and of lagoons located to the north of the Po River Delta, and/or their impacts on the environment, such as damages to forested areas, floodplain, urban, and coastal flooding. The improved understanding of storm events in the area of interest, as well as of the associated impacts, will be used to quantitatively evaluate how such phenomena and impacts may change due to climate change and anthropogenic interventions (e.g. The MoSE system protecting the city of Venice) according to different expected scenarios.
Research team and environment
The research activity will take place at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering at the University of Padova, within a research group of about 10 researchers (PhD students, Post-Docs, Research Scientists, and Faculty Members), under the coordination of Prof. Marco Marani
(https://en.Didattica.Unipd.It/off/docente/283FDE1B3E817B636223A32C32B8786F). The group work covers hydrologic modelling, statistical hydrology, coastal morphodynamics, coastal hydrodynamic circulation, sediment transport. Methods include field work (in the Venice lagoon and elsewhere), environmental remote sensing, numerical modelling. The group collaborates with several other research groups within the University of Padova (Department of Geosciences, Department of Agro-Forestry), in Italy (e.g. University of Bologna, IUSS, Pavia, Polytechnic Turin, CNR Bologna, University of Palermo, and others) and abroad (e.g. Duke University, The University of Iowa, University of Connecticut, and others).
Suggested skills:
Basic knowledge of:
- Global and local water cycle and hydrological processes at Earth's surface
- Statistics and probability Coding, with no preference for a specific programming language (e.g. Matlab, Python, R, etc.)
