Location: Streatham Campus, University of Exeter, EX4 4QJ

Primary Supervisor: http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/engineering/staff/grtaborProfessor Dragan Savic

Secondary Supervisors: Dr Raziyeh Farmani

Funding: 4-year studentship: Tuition fees (UK/EU) and an annual stipend equivalent to current Research Council rates

The loss of potable water from the distribution network through leakage remains significant across world’s water utilities. Despite significant advances in technological innovation there remains a disconnect between high level leakage target setting and investment optimisation such as the calculation of the Sustainable Economic Level of Leakage, and real time operational activities for leakage management. There is a need for better fusion of the wealth of historic and real time data currently available from multiple sources in order to develop more dynamic strategic decision making tools that take advantage of known historic data trends to support and enhance the application and interpretation of real time data from increasingly sophisticated smart networks.

This project will develop a better understanding of the explanatory factors for the historic performance and efficiency of leakage management activities by investigating new real-time analytics and correlation with available data, as well as by improving leakage management through strategic decision making. The project is part of the Water Informatics: Science and Engineering (WISE) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) programme (wisecdt.org) and involves an industrial placement with RPS, industry specialists in leakage management, who have part-sponsored this project.

Applicant criteria: Applicants should have or expect to achieve at least a 1st Class Honours degree, or 2:1 in Post graduate degree or equivalent, in Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Geography or Environmental Sciences. Experience in Statistical Analysis, Modelling and appropriate software programming is desirable but not essential.

Contact for informal enquiries: Professor Dragan Savic (tel: 01392 723637)

Postgraduate Research Office: emps-pgr-ad<στο>exeter.ac.uk

The closing date for applications is midnight on 1^st May 2015