PhD Opportunity to Explore "Decision Support Frameworks for Sustainable Land Impact"

Context

Public, private and third sector organisations are under greater pressure to demonstrate how they are address the climate and ecological emergencies, and supporting the UK’s levelling up agenda. Additionally, there are a range of other crises that are often referenced such as the cost of living and housing crisis. How land is used and developed has a significant impact on these issues as well as the potential to enable people to live happier and healthier lives. Therefore, there is a need to better understand and quantify the natural, social, human, intellectual and manufactured, financial capital of land and its uses and the associated flow of benefits to the organisations that own it and also society that depends on it.

In the UK, there is a large amount of disparate land and building-related data that is in the public domain. This is often geospatial and can provide an insight into an organisations impact, often in ways that the organisations themselves might not be aware of. Accessing and intelligently combining this information could enable their decision makers to make more informed choices that delivers improved sustainability both for them as organisations and benefits to society at large. Further, in practice, organisations are dependent on internal asset management systems that are not efficient at providing data to locate an asset, evaluate its internal and external value creation, and identify opportunities for value-add without the need to query open-source data. Finally, it is rare to see this internal and external data being ‘joined-up’ with the ability to understand and quantify the potential of sustainability initiatives for organisations meaning significant opportunities are missed or just delivered too slowly to deliver the change that society requires. This research aims to bring such public and private data together in meaningful and scalable ways. Undertaken in an applied setting, the potential positive impact of this research could drive forward a range of targets included in the UK 25 Year Environment Plan, the UK’s Net Zero Targets included in the Climate Change Act, the Levelling up White Paper as well support the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development goals at significant scale and pace.

The process of standardising and structuring the data to allow for efficient and effective analysis is a capability that is not readily available to organisations and is often outsourced to consultancies in a time consuming and expensive manner. Moreover, the consulted strategies are often misunderstood with a lack of clear, evidence-based recommendations that often results in advice that is not progressed and delivered. Additionally, as consultants regularly do this in an unstructured and often not entirely evidence-based way, it is difficult to compare learnings from across organisations and benchmark performance easily.

The Proposed Research Topic

The scope of this research project is to develop a framework to bring together publicly accessible geospatial and privately datasets of organisations to enable them to make more sustainable land use decisions. Through this process, they will be able to project, assess and improve their impacts. Such land use decisions could involve a range of options for land which include residential or commercial development (to varying standards), nature-based solutions and/or the development of a range of renewable energy technologies and storage options.

It is anticipated that the research will involve developing a framework to inform two inter-related questions:

  1. What land will best support different land-use changes / development opportunities? This will identify idealised characteristics for certain land use changes / development opportunities and working with geospatial datasets to query these to prioritise land acquisition, management or disposal.

  2. Once a site has been identified as suitable what are the impacts of various development standards? Once a site has been determined to be more suitable for a certain type of activity, assessing the impact of a range of relevant standards on environmental, social and economic outcomes for both the landowner and wider society. Such impacts may include, carbon emissions / sequestration, health and wellbeing implications, social inclusion, or commercial and/or wider economic impacts.

The research will also be expected to explore the inter-relationships of the above with a range of land owners to develop approaches which address real world immediate problems. The work will inform the ongoing development of a Land Impact platform.

Sponsoring Organisation / Industrial Collaboration

This PhD would be in collaboration with the University of Bristol and 3ADAPT, a SME sustainability consultancy founded in 2017. We work with organisations which often have individual turnovers in excess of £1bn a year, and significant land and property portfolios. Currently we have ongoing work with a range of clients with a combined land ownership over 50,000 ha. We support organisations to develop their organisational strategies to improve their environmental, social and economic impact. Your research would involve being part of our multi-disciplinary team, include a range of environmental analysists, engineers, social value experts, strategists, and full stack software developers. To support your research, there would be an expectation to engage with our clients directly.

WHAT 3ADAPT OFFER

Working as part of our small but growing team, you will get unparalleled exposure to a diverse and varied workload. We want to learn from those that we work with and share our experiences with people who are going to make a difference.

In return, we offer you:

  • The flexibility to specialise, but also to explore new areas of expertise,

  • Unrivaled client facing contact and opportunities for career progression,

  • A collaborative and diverse work environment in a small and supportive team,

  • A competitive salary depending on experience (based on a 37.5 working week):

    • Graduate Consultant/Analyst: £25,000 – £28,000 per annum.

  • Encouragement and support to pursue personal training and learning opportunities, including payment of an annual professional subscription,

  • 25 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays,

We also strongly believe that we should ‘practice what we preach’ and operate within our own ‘Doing Good: Responsibility and Sustainability Policy’. This sets out our commitments to ensuring that our own business is having a positive impact through growing Natural, Social, Human, Intellectual, Manufactured and Financial capitals.

As part of this we:

  • Commit to the development of a diverse team and equitable pay and rewards,

  • Encourage staff to undertake 2 days of volunteering per year on charitable / educational work,

  • Donate a percentage of profits to good causes of the team’s choice,

  • Will be net zero carbon across all scopes by 2023 and a further commitment to becoming climate positive.

THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

We are looking for a ‘self-starter’, who is passionate about addressing complexity through understanding data and collaborating closely with people to make change happen. Whilst the work we do is serious, we believe that we can still do this whilst having fun!

An example of what you will be doing:

  • Undertaking academic research in an applied industrial setting,

  • Working with the consultant team on projects,

  • Applying the latest academic thinking to real world problems

  • Working with our developer team to combine and explore datasets,

  • Actively contributing to and shaping 3ADAPT’s reputation and growth,

  • Developing solutions to the challenges that we face as a society.

Beyond this, you will ideally:

  • Have an understanding of and passion to solve sustainability issues,

  • Possess experience working collaboratively, in a team environment,

  • Have excellent written and oral communication skills and the ability to communicate technical information,

  • Desire and drive to continuously learn,

  • Have experience of a previous placement or internship experience (preferable),

  • Hold a related degree or equivalent qualification.

INTERESTED?

If you are interested in being a part of our growing team, based in the heart of the World Heritage City of Bath, please get in touch. To discuss this position, email a copy of your CV and covering letter (future@3adapt.com) and we will be in touch.