Research Proposal: Adaptive water resources planning to manage future risks to London’s water supply
Dec 18, 2015
DPhil Studentship Opportunity for October 2016 enrolment
Environmental Change Institute in the University of Oxford
Supervisor: Professor Jim Hall
Managing water supplies in a changing climate is a growing challenge. The uncertainty associated with future rainfall, river flows, water quality and groundwater makes it difficult to plan for the future with any degree of certainty. Under the circumstances, it may be desirable to adopt flexible strategies that keep options open for the future. There is a desire to develop ‘adaptation pathways’ for water resources management systems. Adaptation pathways demonstrate the possible sequences of options that might be adopted to cope with a wide range of future conditions.
The Environmental Change Institute in the University of Oxford has developed advanced methodologies for risk assessment of water resource systems and for decision making under uncertainty. This work will combine these methodologies in order to develop and demonstrate new approaches for water resources planning. The research will focus on the Thames river basin, where climate change and increasing water demand are challenging water supplies.
The research will combine several cutting-edge research areas in order to develop and integrated approach to decision making for the Thames:
1. Statistical analysis of hydrological variability (in surface and groundwater) in order to estimate the probabilities of droughts on a range of scales.
2. Analysis of the risks of harmful water quality, which may jeopardise water supplies.
3. Simulation modelling of the water supply infrastructure in order to estimate the probabilities of water shortage.
4. Development of decision strategies and pathways that ensure that risks to the water supply system are always within the bounds of tolerability.
Further information can be found here.
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