Post-doctoral Research on Water and Climate Change Adaptation

The research projects will be formulated in detail with the selected post-doctoral researcher during an inception phase in The Netherlands. The following positions are planned, the project leader of UNESCO-IHE are given in brackets:

• On river basin and coastal management issues in the Incomati-Maputo Basin in Southern Africa, four positions related to the following five fields:

  • Hydrology: How can a river basin that is vulnerable to climate change adapt to minimize the impacts on hydrology? (Prof. S. Uhlenbrook)

  • River morphology: The impact of climate change and adaptation measures on river morphology (Prof. N. Wright)

  • Freshwater ecology: The ecological impacts of climate change in the river and the formulation of environmental flow requirements (Prof. J. O'Keeffe)

  • Coastal engineering: The processes and physical changes of large and small scale morphodynamics of flood tide deltas and tidal inlets (Prof. D. Roelvink)

• Hydroinformatics: Downscaling of climate change scenarios and risk management modelling of vulnerabilities to climate change (Prof. D. Solomatine)

• On urban water management issues in yet to be decided locations, two positions related to the following three fields:

  • Waste water management: Design of wastewater systems which are more flexible to varying demands in terms of quality and quantity, both between years and between seasons of the year, taking into account the notion - from wastewater discharge to agricultural fields (Prof. P. Lens)

  • Urban drainage: Design and modelling techniques that can make urban drainage systems more resilient and flexible over a larger range of future weather/climatic events. (Prof. D. Brdjanovic)

  • Water supply engineering: Robust, natural water treatment approaches to deal with climate variability: bank filtration, aquifer recharge and recovery, and soil aquifer treatment (Prof. G. Amy)

• On institutional issues (location to be decided) one position related to: Institutions for adaptation: How to assess the adaptive capacity of institutions, and how can the ability of social actors to deal with climate change be enhanced (Prof. J. Gupta)

During the research period, the researchers are expected to spend almost 100% of their time on the project, working in close collaboration with key staff members of UNESCO-IHE and the partner institutes. All researchers will be based part-time at a partner institute in their home country or another country and part-time at UNESCO-IHE in The Netherlands (generally 4 months). Intended starting date is 15 October 2009.

Interested candidates are encouraged to email the overall programme coordinator: Dr. Rosh Ranasinghe (r.ra...@unesco-ihe.org) for more detailed information.