Enhancing infrastructure resilience: integrating lifecycle analysis for climate-adaptive restoration

We are recruiting new Doctoral Researchers to our EPSRC funded Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) PhD studentships starting 1 October 2024. Applications are invited for the project title Enhancing infrastructure resilience: integrating lifecycle analysis for climate-adaptive restoration. Successful applicants will receive an annual stipend (bursary) of £21,237, including inner London weighting, plus payment of their full-time home tuition fees for a period of 42 months (3.5 years).

You should be eligible for home (UK) tuition fees there are a very limited number (no more than three) of studentships available to overseas applicants, including EU nationals, who meet the academic entry criteria including English Language proficiency.

You will join the internationally recognised researchers in the Department of Civil Engineering research and PhD programmes | Brunel University London

The Project

Climate change intensifies natural hazard frequency and severity, posing threats to ageing infrastructure. Understanding infrastructure life-cycle considering resilience and sustainability is crucial in mitigating risks and adapting to new challenges. Comprehensive life-cycle analysis is vital for cost-effective, reliable, and resilient infrastructure but is absent in recovery planning.

This project aims to develop a new framework and assessment tools, drawing from UK case studies such as highways and railways exposed to extreme flood and weather events. Integrating resilience and sustainability analytics at asset (e.g. bridge, embankments) and system levels will offer life-cycle-based recommendations. The approach will combine Life Cycle Assessment and resilience analytics, employing sensitivity analysis and trade-offs for variable restoration solutions, focusing on the network's interconnected infrastructure assets. The project will be linked to the ongoing Horizon/UKRI ReCharged project, including training and secondments to partner organisations.

Please contact Dr Sotirios Argyroudis at Sotirios.Argyroudis@brunel.ac.uk for an informal discussion about the studentships.

Eligibility

Applicants will have or be expected to receive a first or upper-second class honours degree in an Engineering, Computer Science, Design, Mathematics, Physics or a similar discipline. A Postgraduate Masters degree is not required but may be an advantage.

Skills and Experience

Applicants will be required to demonstrate strong skills in resilience and life-cycle assessment, climate change models, infrastructure network modelling and GIS and/or programming. You should be a highly motivated individual and pose a strong sense of curiosity, able to work independently as well as in a team, collaborate with others within international groups of experts and have good communication skills.

How to apply

There are two stages of the application:

1.Applicants must submit the pre-application form via the following link

https://brunel.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/epsrc-dtp-24-25-pre-application-form-brunel-university-lon

by 16.00 on Friday 5th April 2024.

2.If you are shortlisted for the interview, you will be asked to email the following documentation in a single PDF file to cedps-studentships@brunel.ac.uk within 72hrs.

Your up-to-date CV;
Your Undergraduate degree certificate(s) and transcript(s) essential;
Your Postgraduate Masters degree certificate(s) and transcript(s) if applicable;
Your valid English Language qualification of IELTS 6.5 overall (minimum 6.0 in each section) or equivalent, if applicable;
Contact details for TWO referees, one of which can be an academic member of staff in the College.

Applicants should therefore ensure that they have all of this information in case they are shortlisted.

Interviews will take place in April/May 2024.

Meet the Supervisor(s)

Sotirios Argyroudis - Dr Sotirios Argyroudis is a Reader of Infrastructure Engineering at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, Design and Physical Sciences at Brunel University London. He is leading the infrastructure risk and resilience research. He is the Deputy Scientific Coordinator of the Horizon/UKRI ReCharged project. He co-founded the www.bridgeUkraine.org initiative, aiming at accelerating Ukraine's critical infrastructure recovery. He co-leads the www.metaInfrastructure.org, which is an initiative that strives to develop solutions for sustainable and resilient infrastructure that is equitable, just and underpin the United Nations SDGs.Sotirios is a member of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience and the Research Group of Geotechnical and Environmental Engineering at Brunel University. Before joining Brunel he was a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at the University of Surrey (TRANSRISK project), and after the completion of his fellowship, he has been appointed as a visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey, UK. He had previously worked at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, as senior research and teaching staff (since 2006) and as a researcher (since 2001). He holds two degrees, one in Civil Engineering (MEng) and the second one in Geology (BSc), and a PhD in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering. Sotirios has been working across international partnerships and has visited and/or seconded to world leading institutes such as Stanford University in USA, the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), the Transportation Research Laboratory (TRL) in UK, the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in Italy, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Sotirios has over 20 years of experience in vulnerability, disaster risk and resilience assessment of critical infrastructure and urban systems exposed to multiple hazards (e.g. floods, earthquakes) and climate change effects. Whilst working in Aristotle University (Research Unit of Soil Dynamics and Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering) he participated and won important national and European research projects (SYNER-G, STREST, REAKT, SAFELAND, SIBYL, LESSLOSS, RISK-UE, SRM-LIFE among others). In the framework of these projects, he delivered research reports and results as well as tailored seminars to stakeholders, owners and risk managers. He has also delivered CPD training seminars in the UK dealing with quantitative and qualitative risk analysis and resilience assessment of critical infrastructure. Sotirios is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK (FHEA) and member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), CEng, MICE. He supervised and co-ordinated several UG, MSc and PhD research students, delivered lectures and seminars on natural hazards, risk assessment and infrastructure resilience. Sotirios authored over 120 project reports, scientific articles in high-impact journals, conferences and book chapters with over 2,700 citations (h-index 28, GoogleScholar). He acts as a reviewer for national research funds such as the EPSRC and the European Commission, and for several international scientific journals. He is Vice-Chair of the IABSE Task Group 1.8 on ‘Design requirements for infrastructure resilience’, member of the EAEE Working Group 13 on ‘Seismic assessment, design and resilience of industrial facilities’ and Nominated member (UK) of the ISSMGE (International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering) Technical Committee TC202 on Transportation Geotechnics. Sotirios has been awarded the 2022 European Council on Computing in Construction (EC3) Thorpe Medal, for the paper: Argyroudis, S.A., Mitoulis, S.A., Chatzi, E., Baker, J.W., Brilakis, I., Gkoumas, K., Vousdoukas, M., Hynes, W., Carluccio, S., Keou, O., Frangopol, D.M., Linkov, I. (2022) "Digital technologies can enhance global climate resilience of critical infrastructure," as a major contribution to practical and research aspects of engineering informatics disciplines in the built environment. Sotirios is at the top 2% most highly cited scientists for 2021and 2022 according to the Elsevier/Stanford list.