PhD Position in Planning Climate Resilient Mobility Networks

Job description

Planning climate resilient mobility networks.

Job description

What is CLIMACT?
CLIMACT (Climate Adaptation through Collaborative Transferability) is a four-year Horizon Europe project coordinated by Dr. Shadi Sharif Azadeh, involving 17 partners across eight European countries. The project develops a transferable framework to assess the effectiveness, limitations, and long-term resilience of climate adaptation strategies across mobility, water-health systems, and agriculture. In the mobility domain, case studies in Lisbon and Greater Manchester examine how flooding and heatwaves affect public transport networks, and how infrastructure, operational decisions, and governance can strengthen resilience. CLIMACT aims to identify adaptation pathways that remain effective under future climate conditions and can be transferred across regions and sectors.
PhD Position
The aim is to develop advanced modelling and optimization methods to improve the resilience of public transport and urban mobility networks under increasing climate risks, particularly flooding and extreme heat. The research will integrate climate projections, transport network simulation, and behavioral modelling to assess how infrastructure vulnerabilities, operational disruptions, and travelers’ responses affect mobility system performance. A central objective is to develop optimization-based decision support methods that identify when existing adaptation measures reach their limits and determine robust adaptation strategies under evolving climate conditions.
The PhD researcher will develop and test these methods through case studies, examining the effectiveness and transferability of adaptation strategies across different infrastructure, operational, and governance contexts. The ideal candidate has a strong background in operations research, mathematical optimization, and stochastic modelling. Experience with simulation, machine learning, or transport demand modelling is a plus.
The Department of Transport & Planning (T&P) of Delft University of Technology is coordinating this project. T&P is composed of 12 research labs addressing various transport challenges. The researcher will be associated with the SUM Lab at CEG and ORBIT Lab at TPM (SUM Lab (tudelft.nl)).
Job requirements
A Master's degree in a relevant field, i.e., Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Computer Science and related topics.
Familiarities with climate adaptation, transport networks, and behavioral science are highly valued.
Strong programming skills.
Ability to work both in a project team, but also independently and take leadership and responsibility for research tasks.
Willingness and ability to communicate with other scientific partners, companies, and cities.
Willingness to contribute to a stimulating research environment and interactions with project partners and stakeholders.
Passionate about scientific excellence and impactful research.
Excellent communication skills in English, both written and oral.
If your native language is not English and you do not hold a degree from an institution in which English is the language of instruction, you must submit proof of English proficiency from either TOEFL (minimum total score of 100) or IELTS (minimum total score of 7.0). Proof of English language proficiency certificates older than two years are not accepted.
TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)