Study level

  • PhD

Faculty/School

Faculty of Engineering

School of Architecture and Built Environment

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Centre for the Environment

Supervisors

Dr Angela Guerrero Gonzalez
Position
Senior Research Fellow
Division / Faculty
Faculty of Engineering

Overview

Addressing the urgent need for community resilience amid escalating climate risks, including floods, extreme heat, and bushfires, is crucial for burgeoning cities. These cities comprise intricate networks of social, ecological, physical, and technological subsystems with structural and functional interdependencies. Understanding this complexity is vital for evaluating a city's resilience to climate risks and formulating effective policies and planning strategies. By applying complexity science principles, researchers can illuminate the dynamic relationships within these networks, revealing opportunities for sustainable urban development and innovative strategies for mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Research activities

This PhD project, rooted in complexity science, offers a unique opportunity to explore diverse topics. For example, candidates can focus on:

  • investigating how interactions between urban communities and urban nature contribute to community resilience. This exploration may involve studying interactions between communities and urban green spaces, nature-based solutions such as urban forests, green roofs, and wetlands; or understanding how community perceptions of urban nature influence their ability to cope with and adapt to environmental challenges. Such explorations can shed light on how nature-based solutions enhance resilience and aid in responding to environmental hazards
  • investigating how community food networks interconnect with different city components through distribution or collaboration networks, and their interdependencies with the physical and natural environment. Research under this topic would help unravel the potential of community food networks to enhance city resilience against extreme climate events resulting in 'food shocks'
  • investigating the relationship between micro-level social structures, relationships and networks within a community and macro-level indicators of community resilience.  This research will delve into how the intricate social fabric at the micro level contributes to the overall resilience of the community at a larger scale.

Under any chosen topic, candidates will model how the interactions between urban communities and relevant elements of the urban sub systems impact community resilience to climate shocks   (e.g. extreme weather events, sudden drop in food supply). Models will be used to identify patterns associated with the emergence of structural properties linked to increased or reduced community resilience.

Outcomes

The goal of the project is to decipher the intricate web of urban systems with complexity science and deliver insights to aid identification of transformative strategies for climate resilience. Anticipated outcomes of this project include:

  • a literature review of studies investigating how complexity science has been utilised around the world to understand the multiscale and multilayered structure of cities and urban resilience
  • identification of structural properties of cities that facilitate community resilience
  • dissemination of study findings through reputable academic channels
  • communication with key stakeholders and policy makers to progress climate resilience policy in Australia.

Skills and experience

It is essential that you have:

  • a bachelor degree with honours or a master degree (with a significant research component), in a discipline of relevance to the chosen research topic
  • strong written and oral English skills.

It is desirable that you have:

  • peer reviewed publication/s, ideally as a lead author
  • experience in applied quantitative skills to an environmental problem.

This project would suit a candidate who is interested in applying and advancing quantitative skills, as well as qualitative methods, to solve challenging environmental problems. The project will apply a variety of tools including network theory and modelling, data scraping, interviews, surveys, and content analysis.

Scholarships

This PhD project has a scholarship available.

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Keywords

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.