The following advertisment will be placed in the press at the end of this
week
EA/MBS07.01
THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
Manchester Business School
Decision Support Systems for Emergency Management
Research Assistant/Associate
Required for three years, starting as soon as possible. The post will
support two EU funded projects on emergency management, developing decision
support systems and methods of analysis to support key decision makers.
Skills in at least one of decision support systems development, operational
research or statistics are sought, supported by a postgraduate
qualification.
Salary: £16,775 - £19,482pa (under review) depending on qualifications and
experience.
For informal enquiries, further particulars and application forms, please
contact Professor Simon French (tel: 0161 275 6401, email:
[log in to unmask]) or Dr. Nadia Papamichail (tel: 0161 275 6539, email:
[log in to unmask]) or see http://www.man.ac.uk Closing date: 13
July 2001.
AS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES EMPLOYER, THE UNIVERSITY WELCOMES APPLICATIONS
FROM SUITABLY QUALIFIED PEOPLE FROM ALL SECTIONS OF THE COMMUNITY,
REGARDLESS OF RACE, RELIGION, GENDER OR DISABILITY.
FURTHER DETAILS
MBS has been awarded a number of contracts under the EU Framework 5 RTD and
other programmes. The post will support two of these directly, EVATECH and
ENSEMBLE:
EVATECH: This project is aimed at enhancing the coherence of response to
nuclear emergencies in Europe by improving the decision support methods and
models in ways that take into account the needs and concerns of different
parties involved. Enhanced evaluation subsystems will be developed and
included in the current RODOS and ARGOS decision support systems to help the
decision makers (DMs) judge the relative merits of different countermeasure
strategies. In addition, to provide context for the systems, emergency
management processes will be surveyed and modelled in several European
countries. Methodologies and techniques used for conduct of facilitated
decision making workshops will be examined to produce best practice
procedures. Experts from seven European countries will be trained to
facilitate such workshops. The evaluation subsystems developed in the
project will be tested in scenario-focused workshops to be organised in all
seven participating countries.
ENSEMBLE: The project’s objective is to improve forecasting of national to
European scale atmospheric dispersion of contamination following a nuclear
accident. The project will devise and implement new methods across Europe
for enhancing the confidence in forecasts and will establish common
reconciliation methods for managing disparate forecasts, with associated
uncertainties. These goals will be achieved by establishment of a new
Web-based decision support tool, by which available national forecasts can
be combined in real-time into one single ENSEMBLE forecast. The project
will further establish agreements and procedures for the exchange, managing
and reconciliation of disparate national forecasts during an European-scale
accident, and improve best estimates, including qualification of a
particular forecast uncertainty. The proposed Web tool ENSEMBLE will be
installed across European emergency centres for operational use.
Both projects involve extensive collaboration with many research institutes,
government agencies and emergency management organisations across Europe.
Related projects in the group concern risk communication especially in
relation to food safety and consultancy on long term decision making (e.g.
in decommissioning nuclear plant). Broader interests include the
information society, e-democracy, societal risk and decision making.
These projects are run within a small multi-disciplinary team led by
Professor Simon French and include skills in computing, decision analysis
and support, and risk analysis and communication.
JOB SUMMARY
You will be involved in the following activities:
· process modelling of emergency management processes in several European
countries;
· specification and development of the evaluation subsystem drawing on the
latest techniques in sensitivity analysis for multi-attribute decision
analysis;
· exploration and evaluation of the differences between several atmospheric
dispersion forecasts and the construction of appropriate plots to convey
these differences to key decision makers; and a number of other activities
related to the group’s range of projects.
PERSON SPECIFICATION
Qualifications:
Essential: An first degree in a relevant discipline (e.g. computer science,
information systems, operational research or statistics).
Desirable: A good postgraduate degree in a relevant discipline.
Skills and personal qualities:
Essential: An analytic approach to problems and the ability to work
quantitatively.
Good IT skills (word processing, the web, etc.).
Good team working skills.
A willingness to work in a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional
project.
Good organisational and communication skills
Desirable: Some research experience.
A knowledge of computer programming and software engineering with ideally
skills in C++ or a high level production language.
A knowledge of statistical methodology.
A knowledge of decision support.
Others
Essential: The flexibility to work occasional evening and week-ends
A willingness to travel to meetings on a occasional basis or to work for a
few days at partner organisations.
Training can be provided for candidates with some, but not all, of the above
skills, and an expectation to learn and develop is an essential
characteristic sought from the candidate.
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