Paula Vicente

Project: Assessment of drought effects in water resources availability

Supervisors: Professors Raziyeh Farmani and Dragan Savic

Background

Paula is a WISE CDT student based at the University of Exeter and has successfully completed the WISE Postgraduate School. Her PhD research project is focused on water resources management under drought conditions. Paula’s academic background includes an MA in Urban Design from Oxford Brookes University in 2016 and a BSc and MSc in Environmental Science from the University of Leon, Spain (2008-2013). During these five years, she was granted both a national and Erasmus international mobility scholarship at the Technical University of Valencia, Spain during 2011-2012 and at the University of Gothenburg in 2012-2013 respectively. As part of her dissertation project at the University of Gothenburg, she developed a GIS map showing the seasonal risk of flood prone areas in the Västra Götaland County of Sweden.

Work Experience

Before joining the WISE CDT PhD Programme, Paula worked as a Graduate Waste and Minerals Planning Consultant at WYG in Southampton. This role involved preparing planning applications, environmental impact assessments and environmental permit applications for minerals and waste management sites. She also coordinated and undertook environmental monitoring of landfill gas, soil, groundwater and surface water quality on a series of locations and RSPB sites.

Paula has recently been awarded a junior research grant by IUKWC to undertake her proposed project in India during March 2019 entitled ‘Freshwater resources analysis from Water Harvesting Structures in the Sambhar Salt Lake region, Rajasthan’.

Paula is also working as a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant alongside her studies; undertaking tutorials, demonstrations and practical sessions on modules in statistics, natural science and management science.

Research Interests

  • Water resources management in arid and semi-arid regions
  • Groundwater resources
  • Agricultural development under drought conditions
  • Global change
  • Food-Energy-Water Nexus
  • Water and sanitation in developing countries.