应对气候变化的人道主义风险储备机制

该项目整合了气候科学、数据科学与决策科学，旨在提升处理极端气候事件的人道主义风险池的财务建模能力。研究探讨了气候不确定性对财务可持续性及决策过程的影响，并为在变化的环境中实现韧性运营提供建议。申请者应具备扎实的数学基础。

Job description: Details: Background: In order to meet humanitarian needs both before and after disasters happen, risk pools such as Start Ready, African Risk Capacity, and the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility pay out pooled funds to members based on a defined set of triggers, such as flood forecast probabilities. To set the trigger thresholds and ensure financial sustainability, risk pools therefore rely on financial modelling based around the expected number of extreme events that will happen in a season, informed by historical events, seasonal forecasts where available, and climate projections. If we had perfect knowledge of the probabilities of each kind of extreme event, then the financial modelling would be relatively simple. However, the historical record is relatively sparse, seasonal forecasts are subject to high levels of uncertainty, and climate projections are limited by the uncertainty of trend detection and attribution as well as multi-model divergence. PhD project: This project combines climate science, data science, and decision science. Predictability of climatic extremes as they evolve in a changing climate is a theme of many UNRISK projects, and while you aren’t expected to go into all hazards in depth, you’ll be able to draw on the expertise of your supervisors and fellow students to bring together a cross-cutting perspective on changing climate extremes as they affect humanitarian risk pooling. Your data science skills will be critical to this project, starting by understanding the basic financial modelling approaches used by the various risk pools, and then looking in more detail at how climate uncertainties influence their bottom line, both on an annual basis and into the future. You’ll need to integrate a variety of uncertainties (small numbers, high interannual variability, model divergence, confidence in models) and consider the ways in which different uncertainties can be addressed or their effects minimised. Most importantly, you’ll need to spend a lot of time thinking about the implications of your work for the decision-making strategies of these organisations, both to understand the context and constraints of the risk pools, and later to offer recommendations for resilient operations under uncertainty and a changing climate. This project offers you an opportunity to use your mathematical skills to support climate resilient decision-making, and to develop a strong profile between the topics of climate change, catastrophe modelling, and financial modelling. At the end of this PhD, you could continue on an academic career pathway, or would also be well-positioned to begin a career in catastrophe modelling, insurance, finance, or in the humanitarian sector, where your skills will be highly sought after. Applicant Profile: We would like to see applications from students with a strong mathematical background and an interest in supporting financial modelling in the non-profit sector. If you are excited about applying and developing your mathematical skills to support climate resilience worldwide, please get in touch. (Experience working with climate or seasonal forecasting tools, or in the humanitarian sector, would be a useful background but is not required.)

资助说明： 该项目属于 UNRISK CDT 项目的一部分，该项目提供 15-18 项由全额资助的 NERC 学生奖学金，涵盖完整的大学学费；按标准 UKRI 标准发放的个人津贴；6000 英镑的个人研究与培训费用；5000 英镑（每名学生）的群体级培训费用；以及用于特殊项目的“灵活基金”。 国际申请者需承担申请学生签证及国际健康附加费相关的费用（IHS） 申请对象包括英国及国际学生。根据 UKRI 规定，国际学生的录取名额有限。 更多相关信息可访问 UNRISK 网站：[会员链接]