PhD Researcher: Wildfire Decision Support

PhD position in Operational decision-making during wildfire events

Wildfires have significant socio-economic and ecological impacts, posing risks to human lives, buildings, ecosystem services and biodiversity values. In Europe, areas with increased danger are being pushed north by climate change. Even though many industrialized countries have implemented fire management strategies, formal risk assessment systems are lacking in many regions, including Flanders. Pan-European initiatives are hampered by coarse spatial resolution, often underestimating local fire dynamics and overlooking the need for region-specific assessments.

Without this locally contextualised accuracy, the reliable prediction of fire propagation and optimisation of resource deployment remains severely constrained.

We will recruit six PhD students to meet Fire Risk’s core objectives:

• The development of a locally calibrated fire spread model that accounts for land management and design scenarios (PhD
  1).
• The generation of near-real-time, high-resolution maps of fuel loads, fuel moisture, microclimate conditions, and fire weather indices for improved wildfire risk assessment and management (PhD
  2).
• Understanding how land management and landscape design influence wildfire risk and post-fire ecosystem resilience (PhD
  3).
• The translation of scientific outputs into actionable frameworks for both operational decision-making (PhD
  4) and long-term governance (PhD
  5).
• The enhancement of first responder training through high-fidelity 3D visualization (PhD
  6).

This position corresponds to the above mentioned ‘PhD 4’ and bridges the gap between academic research and emergency response by optimising operational decision-making during active wildfire incidents in Flanders. Working centrally within WP5, you will step away from the traditional desk job to collaborate directly with fire zones, emergency planners, and crisis coordinators, analysing existing workflows to translate frontline needs into practical digital tools.

Your core responsibilities involve designing and validating data-driven models for real‑time resource allocation and tactical risk assessment, which you will stress‑test through interactive workshops, post‑incident analyses, and scenario-based field simulations. Ultimately, you will develop user-friendly decision-support prototypes that integrate seamlessly into existing crisis management processes, turning complex data into actionable, life‑saving tools for regional emergency services.

The position requires experience and/or feeling with the fields of emergency response, safety or crisis management. The PhD researcher will collaborate with the Fire Risk‑consortium (including the other PhD researchers) and international partners.