Environmental phenomena and risks

The international PhD in Environmental phenomena and risks (EnPheR), organized jointly with the Department of Science and technology (DiST) and the Department of Engineering of Parthenope University, is in partnership with Universidad de Càdiz (Spain) and Egeo University (Greece). The field of research concerns the observation of a wide range of environmental phenomena and their possible consequences as situations of potential risk and their mitigation.

The object of study is highly interdisciplinary and requests the convergence of tools and competences coming from several different scientific and disciplinary fields. What makes this  PhD program so innovative is the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of its subjects of research and study that are in accordance with the fields of expertise of the faculty group.

Aiming to identify the appropriate mitigation strategies, the study includes the climate observation, as a combination of phenomena at multiple scales in and between atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, lithosphere; the identification of their potential negative effects on people and on the production capacity;  the evaluation of the risk and of the amount of vulnerability of those at risk.

Basic research is in the fields of oceanography, meteorology, climatology, geology, and their interaction focused on the study of pollution, hydrogeologic issues etc.; other subjects are more directly connected to the risk evaluation and its mitigation: hydraulic and maritime engineering, geotechnical and structural engineering,  geomatics, the study of issues related to the methodology of experimental investigation, monitoring and control of the territory.

Those subjects and areas of study provide the PhD students with the essential scientific knowledge and techniques of risk mitigation of dangerous natural phenomena, namely seismic and hydrogeological. Structural interventions aimed to the protection and the preservation of the soil are made by civil engineering works, but also using non structural intervention to secure the territory and the activities on it.