PhD (EU Marie Curie Salaried Post) in Environmental Decision Support 
(Operational Research, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematical Modelling, Optimisation, Data Mining)

The University of York has gained EU Marie Curie funding to recruit a team of 12 enthusiastic researchers to investigate issues, impacts and decisions related to pollution in cities. The CAPACITIE (Cutting-Edge Approaches for Pollution Assessment in Cities) project brings together a world-class team of interdisciplinary researchers from Environment, Chemistry, Computer Science, Electronics, Physics and Sociology at the internationally leading University of York.

Monitoring data will impact on the lives of city dwellers through better decision-making at strategic and operational levels. In this project, the wealth of accurate and timely monitoring data from the variety of sources from 11 sister PhD projects and elsewhere (e.g. weather and map data) will be used in combination with detailed models of urban systems and city-dwellers, and advanced algorithms and heuristics from operational research and artificial intelligence. The result will be decision support systems which allow for real-time and historical visualisation of pollution data and models and optimisation algorithms for reasoning and making better decisions using that data.

We build on a close collaboration between the University of York and Gaist Solutions Ltd. (www.gaist.co.uk). Existing collaboration between Gaist and York has led to decision support systems which combine urban asset condition data from many sources for visualisation and optimisation of maintenance for publicly owned infrastructure such as roads and street furniture. In this project, the PhD student will work closely with Gaist to incorporate environmental monitoring data into these systems, and use complex system models, optimisation heuristics and machine learning algorithms, to develop decision support systems for long-range questions such as 1) Where should pollution-sensitive facilities such as schools, doctors surgeries, hospitals, sports centres etc. be located? 2) Where should polluters (such as transport hubs and factories) be located? 3) How might we influence polluters (e.g. cars, factories) to encourage behaviours which minimises the impact of pollution on urban city dwellers? 4) Which information or visualisations are most pertinent to influencing pro-environmental behaviour amongst different stakeholders or in different contexts? We will also consider real-time operational decision support, for example to use monitoring data within navigation software for foot and road travel, so as to minimise the effects of traffic pollution on urban travellers, and to consider the sensitivity of environmental impact to different operational decisions and modelling assumptions. 

For further information on the CAPACITIE project, including details of the other 11 PhD vacancies, see www.york.ac.uk/environment/about/vacancies/. If you have questions about this project please contact Professor Peter Cowling ([log in to unmask]), Dr Stephen Remde ([log in to unmask]) or Steve Cinderby ([log in to unmask]). 

Successful candidates will be required to take up the PhD position on 1 March 2013 and will receive a competitive salary (≈ 38,000 Euro) and travel allowances for a period of 36 months. To be eligible, you must hold at least an upper second class honours degree (BSc or equivalent) and be within four years of your first degree. The positions are only available to non-UK residents and those who have resided in the UK for less than 12 months in the last 3 years. We strongly encourage women to apply as CAPACITIE strives to achieve gender balance and promote women's involvement in research.

Applications should be emailed to [log in to unmask] Cc: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] before Friday 15 November 2013. Applications should include 1) a covering letter clearly indicating that you are applying for “PhD12: Use of monitoring data and ICT to support city planning decisions”; 2) a curriculum vitae; 3) proof of proficiency in English, if from a non-English speaking country (e.g. IELTs certificate) and 4) two academic references. We anticipate that shortlisted candidates will be interviewed during the first week of December. Please include “PhD12” in the subject line of your application email.