PhD Spatial analysis, GeoAI, solar analysis, multi-objective spatial suitability analysis and GIS-...

As PhD candidate you will estimate the potentials for solar energy generation on roofs, facades, parking areas, etc. of all buildings in the Netherlands. The current dataset of Dutch buildings contains data on building volume and layout, the year of construction, ownership, function, and geographic context. It, however, lacks detailed architectural properties of the buildings, e.g. the portion of windows from the facade area or the presence of open corridors on the facades. Employing geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) methods, such as Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and street view images, you will train a model which estimates the architectural properties of buildings and their potential for solar energy generation.

As PhD candidate you will carry out a multi-objective suitability analysis for wind and solar farms in the Netherlands, using data on the location of lands with peat soil, sand, drought, drink water, adjacency to natural areas and cultural heritage, the abundance of wind and solar radiation, closeness to the population centres and energy demand, and financial interest of farms to end intensive agriculture and enter the energy market. The suitability study uses inputs from industrial partners of the project.

You will develop GIS-based spatial decision support systems (SDSS) to facilitate cooperative decision-making processes by the industrial and societal partners of the FlexECs. The SDSS model will include the data produced by the scientific partners of the project; it allows for interactive testing of different scenarios; and provides feedback on the decisions.

Project
This PhD will be part of the project Flexible Energy Communities: Coupling e-mobility and energy communities (FlexECs). FlexEC is an interdisciplinary project funded by Dutch Research Council (NWO) and aims to investigate the opportunities and challenges of forming mobile energy communities (EC). The core idea of this research project is to harness the social network structures of existing communities so that like-minded citizens living further apart could participate in ECs, too. FlexECs addresses this challenge by researching the synergies between ECs and electric mobility, essentially "mobile ECs".

FlexECs will include six PhD candidates from different universities with expertise in spatial analysis and mobility (Wageningen University), Energy Law (University of Groningen), Urban Economics (Wageningen University), Electronic Engineering (Delft University of Technology), and Behavioural and Social Sciences (University of Groningen). The project will include two postdoc positions to coordinate interdisciplinary studies by PhDs, Assistant Professors and Professors. The researchers will collaborate closely with nine public and private partners in the FlexECs consortium: Arcadis, Generation.Energy, Esri Nederland, Heliox, Municipality of Wageningen, Municipality of Groningen, Trip Advocaten & Notarissen, ING Bank, and Aeres University of Applied Sciences.