PhD candidate - Modelling of competing water use and hydrological risks

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We have a vacancy for a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.The appointment has a duration of 3 or 4 years (with 25% of compulsory work) and the goal is a completed doctoral education up to an obtained doctoral degree. The appointment is financed by NTNU through its call for interdisciplinary research collaboration in sustainability.

The position is part of the SusHydro project that seeks to find innovative and cross-sectoral solutions that shed light on a wider range of services that hydropower and water reservoirs can contribute and shed light on how synergies and conflicts between different sustainability goals can be identified and balanced. SusHydro will do this by putting together a team of experienced professionals and talented young researchers with a background in hydrology and water resource analysis, life cycle assessment, modeling of the energy system, economics, biology and social sciences. Solutions will be developed through case studies in Norway and areas of Africa with rich hydropower resources.

The topic of this specific PhD project is the development of improved tools improved methods for sustainable planning and operation of multipurpose reservoirs with hydropower production. The first part will be carried out in a basin in Africa where the tradeoffs and synergies across a wide set of water use is analyzed, such as irrigation, drinking water supply, flood control and environmental purposes. This will lead to better tools to analyze risks and opportunities across sectors (water, energy, food nexus). The second part will be based on a Norwegian case where the tradeoffs and synergies between hydropower production, flood control and ecology are analyzed. The studies will make extensive use of advanced modelling techniques and new data sources.

You will report to professor Tor Haakon Bakken.