Research Engineer in Climat and Hydrology - Benguerir

Mohammed VI Polytechnic University

International Water Research Institute (IWRI)

Position Title: Open rank (Engineer / Research engineer)

Duration: 12 months renewable for another 12 months

About IWRI:

IWRI is a transversal structure across several UM6P Programs. Research within the center is organized around several major areas that aim to ensure the challenging Food and Water security goal in Africa, with a special focus on developing methods/tools that use multi-source remotely, sensed data. The research aims to improve our understanding of the integrated functioning of continental surfaces and their interaction with climate and humans, with emphasis on sustainable management of natural resources (soil, land, water, agriculture) in the context of Climate Change. One of the center’s goals is to provide a set of services and operational products to users (local, national, and international) that aid in the decision support of water and food systems.

Description:

Mediterranean and north African countries are strongly affected by reduced surface water resources. Assessing the impact of climate change on runoff in small to moderate-sized basins requires climate model scenarios with a high spatial resolution. This is needed to provide useful scenarios to adapt the water management strategies at the catchment scale. Most often, downscaling and/or bias correction of climate model outputs is required to provide relevant simulations for the catchments. Different sources of uncertainties can arise from the choice of GCMs-RCMs, hydrological models and downscaling or bias-correction methods. To consider the uncertainties in future climatic projections, multiple climate and hydrological models are required. Observational data may be another limitation that needs to be addressed, especially for precipitation where the uneven spatial coverage in the context of high spatial variability in semi-arid areas may cause great uncertainties.

Key duties:

The work to be performed will include:

• Processing and organization of large datasets
• Evaluation of different remote sensing data for climate and hydrological applications
• Analyse climate model output for hydrology applications
• Use of different hydrological models coded in MATLAB or Python (a MATLAB-based preliminary models are available)
• Use of computer tools (Python, MATLAB) for the extraction and organization of hydro-climate data and for running different hydrological models
• Use of AI based technics in hydroclimatology
• Study processes and genesis of extreme events.

Criteria of the candidate:   

Engineer, PhD or equivalent in hydrology, hydro-informatics, hydrometeorology, climatology, applied remote sensing on hydrology or related disciplines.

Skills:   

We are searching for a highly motivated and enthusiastic candidate, who should have:

• A good knowledge of hydrology,
• A good understanding of climate models and their use in hydrological applications,
• Experience with remote sensing data,
• Experience in implementing regression models, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning Algorithms,
• Experience in data handling and processing,
• Very good skill in Python and MATLAB,
• Fluency in written and spoken English and French,
• Ability in oral and written communication,
• Ability to work in collaboration and in a team,
• Strong analytical skills for effective problem solving,
• Autonomy and quick learning ability.