Entreprise
Mohammed VI Polytechnic University is an institution dedicated to research and innovation in Africa and aims to position itself among world-renowned universities in its fields The University is engaged in economic and human development and puts research and innovation at the forefront of African development. A mechanism that enables it to consolidate Morocco’s frontline position in these fields, in a unique partnership-based approach and boosting skills training relevant for the future of Africa. Located in the municipality of Benguerir, in the very heart of the Green City, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University aspires to leave its mark nationally, continentally, and globally.
Adresse
Lot 660, Hay Moulay Rachid, Ben Guerir 43150
Poste
About CRSA :
CRSA 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 centre’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.
Job description:
This Research Engineer position is funded in the framework of the research project MorSnow “Monitoring and Quantifying Snowmelt contribution for Moroccan Water Management strategies in the context of Climate Change” at the CRSA center, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco.
The MorSnow research program vision, initiated through its first phase from June 2020, towards developing a decision support tools “DST” for improving water resources management, from experimental to larger basins, by integrating satellites images into hydrological models and artificial intelligence algorithms to quantify and forecast water balance components in the upstream parts of reservoirs and basins in Morocco.
Recently, many spatial datasets related to global hydrology have become available and may constitute a complementary technique to in-situ measurements, especially in scarce data environments. The main challenge of using this coarse resolution imagery is to develop novel approaches to estimate water fluxes partitioning at the basin scale within hydrological and land surface models. Overall, the research will be focused on examining the possibility of using remotely sensed data of snow cover, soil moisture (SMAP, SMOS), LST, and precipitation information (e.g, PERSIANN, IMEREG) to produce a quantitative maps of snow water equivalent (SWE), snowmelt, evapotranspiration, and runoff over the main river basins in Morocco. Thus, other long time series from large-scale products will be served as a proxy to analyse the spatiotemporal behaviour of water fluxes loss and its environmental relationship.
The successful candidate will lead studies on hydrological modelling that will assess and estimate the main components and processes of the water cycle from local to spatial scale using ground and EO products. The primary research focus for this position is to develop and adapt source code of hydro-meteo data distribution and spatialization scheme (e.g. MicroMet) for rainfall-runoff and snowmelt modelling applications. Retrieving a novel approach of merging the long-term time series of multisource inputs from Re-analysis, EO and in-situ observations for model calibration/validation procedures will constitute a challenging assignment.
Key duties:
The successful candidate will join CRSA team to:
- Conduct national research on water resources and climate across Morocco.
- Plan and implement new field experiments and data collection protocol in the High Atlas Mountain.
- Manage and analyse data and metadata for the MornSnow project.
- Develop and adapt a GIS-based hydrologic model for the studied sub-basins.
- Initiate and develop independent lines of research and collaborate with other researchers in UM6P university and their partners, especially in remote sensing, water resources and computer sciences.
- Collaborate with students in the research group on methods and research idea.
- Construct and write papers for leading research journals and conferences
- Elaborate regularly report on project status, and complete other organizational duties as assigned in a professional and timely manner.
For any enquiry, please contact
Pr. Abdelghani Boudhar ([email protected])
Senior Eng Touria Benmira : ([email protected] )
Profile recherché
Criteria of the candidate:
We are looking for a candidate with a PhD degree from an accredited institution in Water Resources engineering, Hydrology, Remote sensing, Soil sciences, Atmospheric sciences, or closely related fields.
Skills:
The candidate must have a background in data analysis, coding and general Earth sciences, especially, should have an affinity with long-term satellite datasets processing, hydrology and climate modelling, large computer programs (using e.g. Python, Matlab, R, JS), geospatial database, GIS, and Google Earth Engine platform. In addition, the successful applicant should be highly motivated to doing scientific research with a high frequency of field work in the Atlas Mountain, strong technical and communication skills are essential.
Applications:
Applications must be sent in a single electronic zipped folder. The folder must contain:
1) a detailed Curriculum vitae,
2) a full list of publications,
3) a copy of the Doctorate or PhD degree certificate,
4) Letter of motivation
5) Electronic copies of the doctoral thesis.
