PhD Studentship: Moving Beyond Susceptibility: Modelling Landslide Hazard in Aotearoa New Zealand

Number of opportunities: 1

Landslides cause an average of 5,000 deaths annually worldwide, and in Aotearoa New Zealand, they have claimed more lives than earthquakes. Economically, aseismic landslides result in NZ$250-300 million in losses each year, with landslides during earthquakes leading to over NZ$1 billion in damage for a single event. While landslide susceptibility modelling is an essential tool in risk management, current models predict potential events rather than actual occurrences. These models also struggle to directly quantify landslide hazards and to address key properties like movement style, runout, and how hazards evolve over time. This Ph.D. project will leverage new time-series data cubes from cloud-based satellite image analysis, alongside New Zealand’s comprehensive landslide inventories, to create innovative models of landslide behaviour. The research will combine field work, empirical modelling, and geospatial analysis, ultimately contributing to better hazard and risk assessments for decision-makers.

This PhD will be part of a broader five-year project funded through the MBIE Endeavor Research Programme, titled, “Hazard, risk and impact modelling for fast moving landslides: Hōretireti Whenua Sliding Lands”. This research programme seeks to plan for, invest smartly, and reduce risk from landslides. This project aims to create, for the first-time, national scale models that characterise and quantify the risk from earthquake- and rainfall-induced landslides. An extended placement in Year 4 of the Ph.D. will allow the integration of research findings into the broader Sliding Lands project.

Key research objectives include:

• Building a time-series data cube of landsliding across New Zealand using satellite imagery archives.
• Applying machine learning to New Zealand’s landslide inventories to model landslide locations and characteristics.
• Integrating time-series and inventory data to develop new models that predict location-specific landslide hazards.

The scholarship supports study towards a PhD in Physical Geography at Durham University. The successful candidate must have either a strong training in a relevant subject such as Physical Geography, Geology, or Engineering Geology, with a numerical background in earth surface processes. Field experience and skills in GIS and programming skills are necessary. 

The scholarship provides UK domestic fees and stipend, and will track UKRI studentship rates, in addition to fieldwork support. The successful candidate will be enrolled and based full-time in Geography at Durham University, and will work closely with colleagues in NZ involved in the Hōretireti Whenua Sliding Lands programme at GNS Science and University of Canterbury.

Interested candidates should contact Professor Nick Rosser to discuss the project further and for details of how to apply: n.j.rosser@dur.ac.uk via the above ‘Apply’ button. The deadline for applications is 12^th February 2025.

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