PhD Studentship – Vulnerability of Local Communities in Scotland to Future
Climate Change and Climate-related Policies
Project background:
Flooding episodes and heat waves have been a regular news feature in recent
years, affecting many people across the UK. The prospect that such extreme
events may become more frequent in a warmer climate has increased awareness
by local communities of the need for adaptation to climate change. As a
result, all 32 Scottish local authorities have signed a Climate Change
Declaration this year. Nevertheless, adaptation planning to climate change
has to date been at the national scale in Scotland, and local-level
adaptation has not been given sufficient attention. This project aims at
understanding the vulnerability of local communities and authorities in
Scotland to future climate change and climate policies.
To determine how future climate change will affect a local community, this
project will make use of existing vulnerability frameworks and adapt them
to the Scottish context. The assessment will focus on the physical
vulnerability, for example, extreme rainfall and storm events that cause
flooding and landslides, and socio-economic vulnerability to these events.
A two-level approach is proposed. This will involve a top-down approach.
First we will use results from global climate models and using statistical
techniques “down-scale” these to the local scale to obtain future climate
change projections, including extreme events. These will then be
interpreted in terms of physical meteorological and landscape vulnerability
to floods, storms and landslides, among others, within a GIS framework and
socio-economic vulnerability (infrastructure, business and industry) to
assess the actual need for climate adaptation. Then, a number of high-risk
regions will be selected where a bottom-up approach will be applied. Such
an approach makes use of local physical and socio-economic data and thus
provides a more thorough assessment of vulnerability to local communities.
This is an interdisciplinary project and is therefore suitable for
graduates from various disciplines, e.g. Geography and Environmental
Sciences.
This studentship is funded by the Scottish Association for Geosciences,
Environment, and Society (SAGES) and is available from September 1, 2008.
It will cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate and provide a tax-free stipend
of £12,600 p.a. over a 3 year period. Successful candidates from outside
the EU will be required to provide funding from their own sources for the
difference between the EU and the overseas tuition fees.
The post will be held under the supervision of Dr. Alexandre Gagnon and
Professor Peter Tucker in the Environmental Initiatives Research Group,
School of Engineering and Science, University of the West of Scotland and
Dr Ruth Doherty, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh.
If you are interested in this project please download an application form
from the SAGES website: http://www.sages.ac.uk/studentships/. Formal
applications for graduate study will also need to be made separately to the
University of the West of Scotland: http://www.paisley.ac.uk/apply/research-
apply.asp.
The deadline to apply for this studentship is February 12, 2008.
For further information about his project, please contact:
Dr Alexandre Gagnon
Environmental Initiatives Research Group
School of Engineering and Science
University of the West of Scotland
Paisley Campus, Paisley
Scotland PA1 2BE
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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