PhD student position in Water saving methods in drinking water systems

We are looking for a PhD student who will investigate water savings within the drinking water systems in the light of increasing water scarcity globally as well as locally. Your work will contribute to development and optimization of both leakage detection methods and pipe renewal strategies. Water savings in-house and studies on the potential of water reuse within buildings are important aspects to be included in the project. New and novel methods and strategies will be developed by you, in collaborations with the drinking water research team at Chalmers, but also PhD colleagues in both DRICKS* research centre/cluster (www.dricks.se) and within the AquaClim** Water research school (https://www.waterresearchschool.lu.se/). Gothenburg Water and Uppsala Water will be the water industry partners in the PhD project.

Information about the division and department at Chalmers
The research will be carried out in the Division of Water Environment Technology (WET) at the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, in collaboration with the researchers at Mathematical Science department, at Chalmers University of Technology.

Project description
Safe drinking water is essential for society, but one of the challenges is to design a robust system delivering drinking water every hour, every day, with no disruptions. Since most of today’s drinking water pipes were laid in the ground in the 1950s-1980s it is a deteriorating pipe network infrastructure affecting society. The water leakage in Sweden is around 20% (but up to 50% in some systems) of the produced drinking water in average. Due to climate change effects, more raw water shortages/scarcities have been observed globally worsening the situation. Despite a country like Sweden, which historically had an abundant supply of water, raw water shortages have occurred locally in several places in the south-east the last decade. With supplies becoming limited, it is essential to minimize loss of drinking water in a cost-effective way. Therefore, we need to manage our water sources more carefully, make sure we lose a minimum of drinking water in the pipe network, but also saving more water within buildings, identify and reuse water such as greywater and rainwater both in private and business buildings.

This PhD project will focus on identifying and optimising leakage detection methods for distribution networks, mainly methods and technologies that are available today but also the latest emerging methods and techniques will be included. Analyses of improvements and optimisations of today’s management methods of pipe repair and renewal strategies, to save drinking water, will also be included in the PhD project. Strategies to reduce water leakage in the distribution system will be evaluated using technical effectiveness assessment and societal cost-benefit analyses as well as statistical analyses of existing production and leakage data.

Drinking water production is an energy-intensive process, and minimizing loss and promoting reuse of greywater, when appropriate, will lower energy needs and support access to clean water in the society.

*DRICKS is a research centre including 5 universities, 11 water utilities and 8 companies in Sweden that jointly carry out drinking water research with the mission to develop and disseminate applied knowledge of drinking water together with the industry – from source to the tap.

**AquaClim unites 6 universities, 4 Swedish water research clusters, 290 municipalities represented by Swedish Water and Wastewater Association, and more than 75 doctoral students in interdisciplinary education and communication to address this challenge and transform the future of water and sanitation together.

Major responsibilities
Your major responsibility will be to carry out the PhD project and to conduct research in the area of drinking water engineering, being included in the research centre DRICKS (www.dricks.se). You will have the opportunity to influence the details of the research towards the needs of the project, with the possibility to combine field work with theoretical modelling. As a doctoral student, you will participate in doctoral courses and be involved in department teaching activities. You will develop your skills in communicating scientific results, both through scientific publications to the research community and popular science publications to the public and industry.

As a Ph.D. student you are employed by Chalmers and will receive a salary according to current salary agreements. The position is limited to maximum 5 years. A maximum of 20% of your time will be required for carrying out departmental duties, mainly teaching of graduate and undergraduate courses. The remaining time will be spent on your doctoral courses and research project, and you are expected to obtain a Ph.D. degree within 5 years (nominal time without department duties is 4 years).

Qualifications
You have good knowledge of and an interest in water systems, data management and statistical analyses and enjoy both experimental and modelling work. A suitable background is a Master of Science degree (Swedish: civilingenjör) in e.g. Civil, Environmental or Mathematical Engineering programme, or equivalent degree. A sound knowledge and experience of data processing and programming (e.g. C++, Python, Matlab or similar) is advantageous.

You are expected to work both independently and collaborating with researchers and PhD students engaged in DRICKS, have an ability to plan and organize your own work, and to be able to communicate your scientific results in English.

Contract terms
Full-time temporary employment. The position is limited to a maximum of five years.

For more information about what we offer, application procedure and contact information please visit the ad at Chalmers web page. See link: PhD student position in Water saving methods in drinking water systems

Application deadline: 2023-08-20