2 PhD: Modelling coastal migration under climate change and sea level rise

Future sea level rise (SLR), extreme flood events, and urbanization pressure will increase coastal flood risk. In absence of costly flood protection measures in numerous regions, millions of coastal residents will be forced to migrate to safer locations. This research addresses the significant challenge these trends pose to flood risk adaptation and migration policy: which coastal areas should be protected, and in which regions will mass migration become inevitable ?

The ERC-advanced project COASTMOVE will tackle this challenge by focusing on how human adaptive and migration behaviour of global coastal residents and other agents (government) will respond to sea level rise and climate change. For this, the project will develop both a global and regional agent-based model (ABM) which simulates under which conditions coastal inhabitants will move to safer locations. While the focus of this project is on the effect from coastal flooding and long-term sea level rise, other socio economic, demographic and environmental drivers also play a role. Key for the research is to collect data on these drivers, and to quantify the relation between migration behaviour and the drivers. There are two PhD positions available. Both positions focus on developing an agent-based model to simulate coastal migration flows between 2020 and 2100.