Climate change has altered the water cycle from local to global scales, leading to more frequent extreme hydrometeorological hazards that affect environment, ecosystems, and socio-economic activities worldwide. During the first two decades of the 21st century, more than 7000 natural hazards occurred, claimed 1.3 million lives, and affected over 4 billion people around the world, leading to USD 3 trillion economic losses. The majority of these disasters were weather-related that their occurrences have increased significantly, comparing to the last two decades of the 20th century.
In addition, many extreme hazards are likely to trigger other types of hazards, including compound events that exacerbate the cascading impacts drastically, with water being the core element associating with various type of hazards. To investigate the risks that climate change poses to the human society and the natural environment, it requires a good understanding of the involved processes and causal connections from interdisciplinary perspectives. Thus, the next generation of researchers and engineers should be trained to equip such capacity to integrate methodologies and tools from various fields for developing solutions to strengthening climate resilience. The main objectives of the PhD Academy are bringing multidisciplinary academics from VIU network together for widening early career researchers’ vision on global challenges and offering transversal skill trainings for supporting the ECR’s career development.

Call for Applications December 1, 2023 – March 10, 2024 via the VIU website: Click here