Postdoc Living on Soft Soils: Subsidence & Society: Identifying Measures for Dealing with Land Subsidence

The postdoc will identify potential measures in areas prone to subsidence focuses on the technical implementation of these measures and determines their impact on the environment and society. The post doc researches the interaction of different measures in the urban area and/or on the impact of measures beneficial for the rural area. This will result in an overview of the most promising options, their potential and pitfalls from a technological, economic and ecological perspective as well as the development of model scenarios to optimize adaptive management under current and future climates. 

The postdoc will  focus on the identification of technical and economic measures to mitigate and adapt to subsidence as well as governance and legal strategies that facilitate their implementation. For rural areas mitigation and adaptation measures will have effect on both subsidence and peat oxidation and GHG-emissions, which are strongly related to groundwater levels. For urban areas measures to limit, repair or reduce damage to buildings and infrastructures are sought.

The empirical focus of the WP4.1 will be on case studies, and the spatial forecasts from models that were in part trained on these case studies. The methods that we intend to apply are inherently interdisciplinary in nature. The interaction and consequences of the measures implemented in the rural area for the urban area and vice versa will also be part of the study. Through stakeholder analysis, we will identify the key actors in relation to different (sets of) measures. With stakeholders, in workshops and site visits, we will explore promising options, for example in “serious games” zoomed in on the case

The postdoc will be supervised by a team consisting of Prof. Jan Rots (TUD) and Ir. Jan van den Akker (WEnR) and Dr. Mandy Korff (Deltares/TUD).

The postdoc position is available for 3 years based on a full time basis. It is possible that the position will be split between an urban and a rural specialist for part of the time (minimum 1 year full time equivalent).

Applicants are asked to explicitly mention if their interest and experience is related to rural or urban measures or a combination of both.

This project is funded by and contributes to the Dutch Research Agenda – Research along routes by consortia (NWA-ORC) aiming to stimulate research and innovation focused on the NWA routes, designed and implemented by interdisciplinary consortia spanning the entire knowledge chain, in which relevant social partners (Deltares Research Institute, TNO, NAM, Tauw BV, Sweco, Municipality of Gouda, Platform of Soft Soil Municipalities, Province of Utrecht, WDOD, HDSR, STOWA, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom relations, Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and Wageningen Environmental research) are also represented.