Supervisors: Stephen Birkenshaw (NU), Paul Wilson (BGS - Geological Survey of Northern Ireland), Chris Jackson (BGS)
Contact email: stephen.birkinshaw@newcastle.ac.uk
Location: Newcastle
Project Rational: Whilst occurring at the same time as fluvial driven floods, groundwater floods can often be misdefined. However, their duration can far exceed that of fluvial floods and can have longer term impacts to property, communities and businesses. Not recognising and detecting groundwater floods can result in flood risk management plans failing to adequately protect against the harmful effects of groundwater flooding.
The second cycle Northern Ireland Flood Risk Management Plan has included a measure to ‘Undertake a study to develop a better understanding of the potential for groundwater flooding in NI’, as recommended by the Floods Directive Technical Stakeholder Group. Current flood risk maps do not consider groundwater flooding as a driver and as such, likely understate the impact longer duration groundwater flooding may have. It is therefore essential that this flood driver is better understood and factored into future flood risk management.
This project aims to assess the susceptibility of Northern Ireland’s catchments to groundwater flooding and to compare this against current flood risk maps and measures. How groundwater flooding under future climates will also be assessed and new techniques to improve flooding maps developed.
Methodology: Approaches to characterise the drivers of groundwater flooding across floodplains underlain by permeable superficial deposits and methods to quantify groundwater, fluvial and compound flood susceptibility and risk, will be reviewed (e.g. Macdonald et al., 2012; Smith, 2020). Methods currently applied for Northern Ireland (NI) will be evaluated. Analyses of spatial and temporal datasets will be undertaken to identify if any data-based methods can be developed to improve current groundwater flood susceptibility and risk maps for NI.
A groundwater flood susceptibility map for NI will be developed using physically-based hydrological and groundwater models and the results compared with the current flood risk maps for Northern Ireland. Coupled with hydrodynamic models, an estimate of the number of properties affected by groundwater flooding in NI will be derived. An assessment of future groundwater flooding will be made using climate models projections (e.g. UKCP18; CANARI Large Ensemble) and compared with estimates for fluvial floods (Smith et al., 2024).
Low-cost river and groundwater level monitoring will be installed to validate the groundwater susceptibility map in two case study catchments.
The potential of new hybrid methods that combine machine learning and physical models to produce groundwater flood susceptibility maps will be explored.
Background Reading:
- Macdonald, D., Dixon, A., Newell, A. and Hallaways, A. (2012). Groundwater flooding within an urbanised flood plain. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 5(1), pp.68-80.
Smith, B. (2020). A Methodology for Assessing Flood Risk from Multiple Sources. PhD Thesis. Newcastle University.
Smith, B., Birkinshaw, S., et al. (2024). Physically Based Modelling of UK River Flows Under Climate Change: Datasets and Results. Frontiers in Water, doi: 10.3389/frwa.2024.1468855
FLOOD-CDT
This PhD is being advertised as part of the Centre for Doctoral Training for Resilient Flood Futures (FLOOD-CDT). Further details about FLOOD-CDT can be seen here https://flood-cdt.ac.uk. Please note, that your application will be assessed upon: (1) Motivation and Career Aspirations; (2) Potential & Intellectual Excellence; (3) Suitability for specific project and (4) Fit to FLOOD-CDT. So please familiarise yourselves with FLOOD-CDT before applying. During the application process candidates will need to upload:
• a 1 page statement of your research interests in flooding and FLOOD-CDT and your rationale for your choice of project;
• a curriculum vitae giving details of your academic record and stating your research interests;
• name two current academic referees together with an institutional email addresses; on submission of your online application your referees will be automatically emailed requesting they send a reference to us directly by email;
• academic transcripts and degree certificates (translated if not in English) - if you have completed both a BSc & an MSc, we require both; and
• a IELTS/TOEFL certificate, if applicable.
Please upload all documents in PDF format. You are encouraged to contact potential supervisors by email to discuss project-specific aspects of the proposed prior to submitting your application. If you have any general questions please contact floodcdt@soton.ac.uk.
Apply
Apply for this PhD here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/fees-funding/search-funding/?code=FLO...
