项目介绍

2026年8月30日

We are looking for a PhD candidate who will develop more realistic flood risk models for financial applications from stress testing of a sector to pricing of individual properties. In this project, you will work on improving flood risk assessment in delta regions by, for example, explicitly incorporating dependencies between dike failures or the spatial extent of rainfall events in flood risk modelling.

About FIRM

Flood Insurance and Risk Management (FIRM) is a five-year research programme (2026–2030), funded by TKI Deltatechnologie, Nationale-Nederlanden and contributions from more than 10 partners from academia, the financial sector, engineering consultancies and government. The central aim of FIRM is to estimate flood and water nuisance risk information as realistically as possible and to make it suitable for use in the financial sector.

FIRM consists of four substantive research pillars and a work package on knowledge transfer. This vacancy concerns a PhD position within Pillar 1. You will collaborate closely with the PhD candidates in the other pillars. You will be supervised by researchers at the University of Amsterdam and work together with experts from the field.

This is what you will be doing

This PhD project focuses on improving the modelling of flood risks due to failure if flood defenses in delta regions and floods because of extreme precipitation for the financial sector, including the effects of climate change and possible interventions. For the failure of flood defenses, the goal is to incorporate and quantify 1) interdependencies because of interaction between flood defenses in a delta region, 2) emergency measures and 3) previously unaccounted-for strength into the modelling of flood risk in flood risk models. For extreme precipitation, the research will focus on the uncertainty of the size of an extreme rainfall event (such as Limburg 2021 or summer storms); this research focuses on constructing a probability distribution for the size of a possible rainfall event. The project consists of:

• Improving flood risk modelling (the combination of the probability of failure of a flood defense, the consequences and the damage) in delta regions by explicitly incorporating dependencies between dike sections and the effect of emergency measures in the risk modelling;
• Improving flood risk modelling for precipitation in delta regions by incorporating the spatial extent of an event based on radar imagery;
• Developing adaptation pathways for insurers and other financial institutions to reduce risk for the financial sector as the overall societal risk and costs;
• Applying the above research questions and testing the developed models in case studies in the Netherlands, in collaboration with the project partners.

Main duties and responsibilities:

• Developing and implementing the BREACH+ method, including system behaviour, the effectiveness of emergency measures and residual strength in sets of flood events;
• Constructing a probabilistic rainfall event size distribution for the Netherlands based on radar imagery and integrating this into a precipitation risk model for financial applications;
• Quantifying the effect of climate change (as KNMI’23 and future updates based in IPCC) and adaptation pathways on the expected annual damage, insurance premium and total costs;
• Applying the models in case studies in the Netherlands in collaboration with Nationale-Nederlanden and other FIRM partners;
• Presenting research findings at international conferences and publishing in leading peer‑reviewed journals;
• Completing a PhD thesis within four years;
• Contributing to teaching activities (approximately 20% of your time), including tutorials and supervision of theses.

This is what we ask of you

This is an interdisciplinary project that combines hydraulic engineering, probabilistic risk analysis, actuarial science and data science. We realize that candidates will usually have expertise in one of these fields and ask for a genuine interest in the others.

• A Master’s degree (or completion before September 2026) in Civil Engineering, Hydrology, Actuarial Science, Econometrics, Applied Mathematics or a related field;
• Affinity with quantitative risk analysis and probabilistic modelling;
• Experience with programming (Python, R or similar) and working with large datasets;
• Ability to communicate complex technical findings to non‑specialists in the financial sector and in government;
• A collaborative mindset — FIRM is a team effort involving researchers, insurers, engineers and policymakers;
• Fluency in English is essential. Proficiency in Dutch is an asset;
• Intellectual curiosity, attention to detail and the drive to successfully complete a four‑year research project.

Applications that do not satisfy all listed requirements will not be taken into consideration

Supervisors: Prof. dr. Bas Kolen (UvA, HKV) · Prof. dr. ir. Michel Vellekoop (UvA)