Work environment, missions and activities:
In large cities and metropolitan areas, urbanization is gaining space on peri-urban agricultural areas, thus potentially increasing the risk of flooding and the exposure of human and economic issues. In the context of climate change, this type of land use planning does not seem sustainable. Maintaining and even developing agriculture in peri-urban areas therefore appears to have a role to play in protecting cities from flooding through two processes: limiting the increase in flooding impact on densely populated areas and retaining water in agricultural areas. The risk of flooding and proximity to urban centers have advantages and disadvantages that can affect the viability or development of farms over the long term.
This is the question that the CAFRUA (Challenges of Agriculture adaptation to Flood Risk in Urban Areas) project proposes to analyze at the scale of a metropolis, Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole (for more details, refer to https://so-ii.org/challenges-of-agriculture-adaptation-to-flood-risk-in-urban-areas-cafrua/).
The Joint Research Unit G-eau, which coordinates CAFRUA, has been working for more than 10 years on the issues of vulnerability and adaptation of the agricultural sector to floods, in particular by developing models for assessing the impacts of these floods. The project is carried out in collaboration with other research units (UMR Innovation, UMR Lagam, UMR ART-Dev) combining agronomy, economics, geography and urban planning. As part of the CAFRUA project, the work done with this internship will allow to :
- enrich the knowledge of the exposure of agriculture to these risks on an international scale ;
- test the replicability of the methodologies developed in the framework of the so-ii observatory ;
- launch a dynamic of observation of the impacts of floods on agriculture on a European scale.
Your mission and activities:
The objective of this internship is to analyze the exposure of agriculture in flood-prone and periurban areas at the scale of several cities or metropolises in Europe. It is based on a methodological approach that was developed in 2022, within the framework of the CAFRUA project and applied to the project’s application territory, which is the flood impact observation system (soii).
It is proposed to test the implementation of the methodology in several European cities (Germany, Greece, Italy...). The analysis will rely on third-party datasets accessible at the European level in order to maximize homogeneous data collection (Corine Land Cover, Land Parcel Identification System). The results will be presented at two levels :
- analysis of the replicability of the method in different contexts ;
- comparison of the exposure of agriculture to the two stresses (flooding and urbanization) on different case studies.
The course will take place in the following stages:
- literature review of methods for analyzing agricultural exposure to flooding and urbanization;
- identification of application sites and site-related contacts;
- collection of datasets of the selected metropolises;
- processing and analysis of the datasets according to the method developed on the so-ii territory for each of the selected study cases;
- ccontacting the research teams or other actors involved in the case study with the perspective of discussing the results during an international seminar planned at the end of the project in December 2023;
- writing an internship report (project deliverable).
Training and skills:
This internship is open to students in their last year of a Master’s degree.
Desired skills:
- Skills and interest in processing and analyzing data in a reproducible manner with the R software;
- Ability to critically analyze methods;
- Ability to work in a team;
- Very good level of English (international scientific literature and contact-making).
- Knowledge of how farms operate and their exposure to certain risks would be a plus.
For more information on the internship offer: click here
To apply, send a letter of motivation and a Curriculum Vitae to:
