About the Project
Water management in the UK is undergoing a major transformation, with the recent Independent Water Commission review calling for a shift toward more regional, integrated planning approaches that can simultaneously address multiple challenges such as flood risk, drought resilience, water supply, water quality, and ecohydrological processes. Greater Manchester is leading this transition and provides a unique testbed for developing integrated water management systems. This PhD builds on existing work in the Upper Irwell catchment, where hydrological, water quality, and optimisation models have already been piloted, and contributes to a broader effort to develop the digital infrastructure required for physically based, AI facilitated, integrated water system modelling in a real-world planning context.
Research questions
This project will investigate how integrated modelling frameworks can be developed to better support multi-objective water management. Key questions include: how best to link and couple different components of the water system (e.g. water resources, flood, and sewer models); what levels of process representation and model complexity are most appropriate; how to design robust data pipelines and computational infrastructure for integrated modelling; and how these tools can be used to generate actionable evidence for regional, cross-sector decision-making. The research will also explore how model integration influences system understanding, uncertainty, and the effectiveness of interventions across multiple water-related hazards. The project will be supported by the Greater Manchester Integrated Water Management team.
The i-Risk Doctoral Focal Award
i-Risk PhD research offers a unique opportunity to contribute to the generation of new knowledge in the forefront of informatics. i-Risk cohorts will advance understanding and deliver innovative tools and solutions for multi-hazard systemic risk resilience and sustainability practice. Doctoral Researchers will undertake a structured training programme and partner co-created interdisciplinary research projects.
Our Vision
The vision of i-Risk is to train the next generation of research practitioners and leaders who will be at the forefront of collaborative research and:
1. Integrate informatics with understanding of evolving risk throughout the environment
2. Collaborate with a broad range of partners from industry, government agencies, global organisations (e.g., the United Nations) and Non-Government Organisations to ensure research directly informs policy and practice, delivering widespread impact.
Core Research Themes
i-Risk builds on 4 leading UK institution’s long-standing strengths at the vanguard of informatics, multi-hazard risk, and resilience research, with unparalleled facilities and >70 multidisciplinary academic supervisors for subject-specific support, providing students with an exceptional research environment.
i-Risk has four core research themes:
1. Observations, monitoring and understanding.
Deploying nascent technologies and intelligent observation/monitoring/experimental approaches to gather rich data to understand evolving hazards.
2. Modelling and understanding processes/risk.
Developing data analytics approaches/tools to model and understand intertwined natural, social, and engineering systems, enabling analysis and characterisation of multi-hazard systemic risks.
3. Forecasting, prediction and early warning.
Predicting and forecasting hazard risks for timely, reliable warnings, facilitating elective risk mitigation and community/infrastructure resilience.
4. Risk communication and management solutions.
Delivering innovative tools and solutions supporting sustainable multi-hazard systemic risk management, rendering hazard/risk information accessible to/intelligible by end-users/stakeholders, advancing sustainability practice and policy.