PhD Studentship : Mitigating Climate Impacts Towards a National Warning Platform for Reducing Heat-related Risk on Human Health, NERC GW4+ DTP PhD Studentship for September 2025 Entry

About the Partnership

This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP). The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter plus five Research Organisation partners: British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. The partnership aims to provide a broad training in earth and environmental sciences, designed to train tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science. For further details about the programme please see http://nercgw4plus.ac.uk/

Project details

For information relating to the research project please contact the lead Supervisor via T.Economou@exeter.ac.uk

Project Aims and Methods

Climate change has been termed a crisis and mitigating its effects on human health is a vital necessity. With temperature records having been broken repeatedly in recent decades, heat-stress is posing a serious health risk (e.g. the fatalities in the 2007 London marathon). This project aims to provide an epidemiologically justified heat-risk alarm platform as a tool to mitigate such risk. Current warning systems do not account for population and public health data, crucial pieces of information this project will use to enable bespoke warnings across demographics, socio-economic status and spatial regions. Here a collaboration between the University of Exeter and the Met Office brings together expertise and data in environmental intelligence and public health, into a research project aiming towards a data-driven heat-stress warning platform. The project is appropriately multi-disciplinary, at the interface between AI, environmental science, meteorology and epidemiology. Corresponding skills (machine learning, environmental and public health data manipulation, risk mapping, computational skills) will be gained by the PhD student, who will be hosted at the Met Office as a visiting scientist. The project will also draw unique knowledge in heat-warning systems from collaboration with the University of Freiburg, the National Observatory of Athens and the Cyprus Institute. 

Project partners

The Met Office will provide inaccessible health data on daily mortality stratified by post-code area and demographics, in addition to agreement to host the student as a visiting scientist. 

Training

The DTP offers funding to undertake specialist training relating to the student’s specialist area of research. 

Useful links

Webpage: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/networks/environmental-intelligence/ 

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