Supervisors: Sien van der Plank (UoS), Laurent Amoudy (NOC), Emma McKinley (Cardiff University), Alan Frampton (BCP Council)
Contact email: Sien.vanderplank@soton.ac.uk
Location: Southampton
Project Rational: Coastal flooding hazard will be increasing over the next century driven by unavoidable sea level rise and other climate change impacts. Since we cannot eliminate the risk of all marine hazards on coastal communities, many coastal management strategies are shifting towards adaptive solutions. Understanding the relationships between people and nature is a key component of sustainable management and climate adaptation. However, lack of knowledge about the diversity of risk perceptions within and across communities, and limited understanding of climate-related coastal flooding risk, coastal change, and the need for adaptation, are limiting the effectiveness of coastal management strategies.
This project will gain new insight into the relationship between coastal communities and coastal adaptation by addressing the following questions:
- How and why do local perceptions of coastal hazards and risks vary within and between communities?
- How do community perceptions of risk compare with evidence from state-of-the-art coastal numerical modelling?
- What are the implications for adaptive capacity and engagement with local communities at various scales?
Outcomes from the project will include new evidence to support more effective communication between coastal managers and local communities and to help foster a widespread culture of engagement within coastal management.
Methodology: The project will draw upon national scale modelling, the UK national survey on ocean literacy, and focus on communities from England’s south coast. The student will liaise with project partners and practitioners to choose appropriate cases. Case studies may include analysis on local practitioner engagement approaches to understand communication pathways with communities, and household surveys to assess risk perceptions, their drivers, and impacts on adaptive capacities. The candidate will adopt mixed methods to develop assessments of community perceptions of coastal change and risks, including drawing on the UK’s ocean literacy survey questions. There may be scope for workshops nationally to compare local results to the wider UK context and explore opportunities for co-developing adaptive pathways for the case study communities.
The candidate will use outputs from a novel national scale coupled modelling system that brings together marine (e.g. wave and surges) and terrestrial (e.g. rivers) models to better reproduce compound events. This model will provide national scale outputs at 500m resolution from simulations under hindcast and climate projection modes. These will be complemented, if needed, by the latest national scale datasets on coastal flooding and erosion from the Environment Agency (e.g. NaFRA2, NCERM2) as well as relevant socio-economic spatial datasets.
Background Reading:
- McKinley et al., 2023, doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114467
-Van der Plank, S. 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103806
- Wei, X., Brown, J.M., Williams, J., Thorne, P.D., Williams, M.E., and Amoudry, L.O. (2019) Impact of storm propagation speed on coastal flood hazard induced by offshore storms in the North Sea, Ocean Modelling, 143, doi:10.1016/j.ocemod.2019.101472
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
To apply for this project please click here: https://student-selfservice.soton.ac.uk/BNNRPROD/bzsksrch.P_Search. Tick programme type - Research, tick Full-time or Part-time, select Academic year – ‘2025/26, Faculty Environmental and Life Sciences’, search text – ‘PhD Ocean & Earth Science (FLOOD CDT)’.
In Section 2 of the application form you should insert the name of the project and supervisor(s) you are interested in applying for.
If you have any problems please contact: fels-pgr-apply@soton.ac.uk.
