MSCA 智能水务系统人工智能与事件中心方向博士职位

Doctoral Candidate 2 (DC2) – Incident Hub - increase in the preparation of water distribution systems through AI and lessons learned

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, is recruiting a Doctoral Candidate (DC) within the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network i3WaterS – Intelligent, Innovative and Integrative Water Systems. The successful candidate will be enrolled in a PhD programme at UPC and will work under the supervision of Prof. Karina Gibert, internationally recognised expert in Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Engineering and Explainable Decision Support Systems. i3WaterS brings together leading universities, research centers, technology developers and water utilities across Europe. The project will train 15 Doctoral Candidates to develop innovative AI-driven solutions for intelligent, resilient and sustainable water systems, contributing to the digital transformation of one of the most critical infrastructures for society. The risk of water scarcity due to climate change and human activities is real. i3WaterS stands for Intelligent, Innovative, Integrative Water Systems and addresses the urgent need to optimize water resources management by providing a comprehensive solution to upgrade, optimally operate and maintain water distribution systems (WDSs). For the first time, a unique holistic approach will find the key interrelationships between external, day-to-day and extreme, factors and WDS failures, to advise actions and protocols to make WDSs robust and reliable. At research level, i3WaterS project focuses on the integration of data, specific expert knowledge and computational simulations tools, introducing the most advanced data-driven and artificial intelligent techniques beyond the State of the Art, that plugged in a newly developed intelligent decision support system (IDSSs), working as an umbrella for a set of 14 independent solutions that enables assisting the WDSs management into scientifically driven decision-making. The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) will help to increase the autonomy of some parts of the WDS, those suitable under a paradigm of maximum security, safety and robustness, and the project will take care to frame this autonomy in a global and general concept of intelligent assistance, including human validation in each steps where it makes sense 15 Doctorate Candidates will learn from a network of experts on network monitoring, data management, algorithms, AI, modeling, microbiology, ethics and industrial partners, and by participating in a specifically designed training programme, they will develop the required cross competencies to find, test and innovate over a solution that will be fundamental to meet the sustainable development goals on water. Just as important, i3WaterS provide a new generation of internationally connected professionals with unique skills for the development of thriving careers in the critical infrastructures. Research Objectives The main research goal of iWaterS is to provide, for the first time, rational analyses and explainable intelligent decision support of WDS to increase resilience to day-to-day incidents and to extreme events in the context of climate change such as floods or droughts, through new interdisciplinary and integral approaches for exploiting datasets (on-line, off-line), intelligent models (data-driven, numerical) and simulation results (digital twins, multiagent systems).

The specific research objective of this offer are the following: the Doctoral Candidate will develop innovative Artificial Intelligence methodologies to improve preparedness and resilience in drinking Water Distribution Systems (WDSs) through the creation of an intelligent Incident Hub. The project aims to transform heterogeneous operational data and expert knowledge into actionable intelligence that supports utilities in understanding, characterising and managing disruptive events. The research objectives are to: • Generate systematic/viable tools for the collection of evidence in an incident Hub of disruptive events, from the opinion of experts (related causes of the event), the management times of the event and information from sensors (effects) that allow the development/training and validation of AI based tools for the characterization of disruptive events in WDSs. • Develop methodologies to combine heterogeneous information sources, including sensor measurements, operational records, incident management logs and expert knowledge, into a structured knowledge repository. • Design, develop, implement and validate innovative supervised and non-supervised learning solutions based on AI to characterize the events and establish the potential causal-effect relationship in the events contained in the Incident Hub. • Investigate how causal relationships between incident causes, operational responses and observed impacts can be identified using advanced Artificial Intelligence techniques. • Develop explainable AI methods capable of extracting meaningful patterns and lessons learned from historical incidents to support future operational decision-making. • Advanced preprocessing and hybrid intelligent clustering will be used to characterize the events and specific intelligent interpretation. • Validate the proposed methodologies using real-world datasets provided by European water utilities and assess their transferability across different operational contexts.

Expected Results: • Systematic tools that allow the appropriate collection of evidence, • new Hub of incidents and, • new AI based tools to characterize the disruptive events that allows obtaining relevant information from different sources in relation to the events.

Training Programme The training proposed by i3WaterS will uniquely integrate decades of knowledge, expertise & achievements in disciplines such as civil and computer engineering, hydroinformatics, geomechanics, applied mathematics, multiobjective optimization, high performance computing, big data, artificial intelligence, modelling, and data management, including soft skills facilitated by academic and non-academic partners. Apart from the PhD thesis done under a multidisciplinar and international supervisory panel composed by an advisor, a coadvisor from a second i3WaterS university and an industrial mentor linked to a real water facility, the program includes an International Doctoral School with six training chapters that take place under an international mobility structure (Barcelona (Spain), Dublin (Ireland), Bordeaux (France), Delft (The Netherlands), Brussels (Belgium), NewCastle (UK)). The contents of the training programme include the most relevant and advanced topics related with smart resilient WDSs and soft skills for the researchers and professionals of the future. The following topics are included in these training chapters: • Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. • Explainable AI and Trustworthy AI. • Knowledge Representation and Semantic Technologies. • Multi-Agent Systems and Intelligent Decision Support Systems. • Digital Twins and Smart Water Systems. • Innovation, entrepreneurship and technology transfer. • Scientific communication and transferable skills.

International mobility will easy connections and visits to water facilities all over Europe, and industrial secondments will give a realistic perspective. Two International Secondments in other second real water facilities will allow extensive testing and validation of thesis findings to guarantee real contribution to the state of art. These Secondments into industrial partners are included with two aims: testing the PhD findings in a different water facility from the one supporting the project development, and to allow providing specialised training to the water utilities staff. Main Supervisor: Prof Karina Gibert (UPC,Spain) Co-supervisor: Dr David Ayala-Cabrera(UCD, Ireland) Industrial Mentor - Experts: Mr Jorge Francés Chust (AQ,Spain)

Requirements / required education level / degree: Master Degree or equivalent

Requirements / required education level / discipline: Computer science

Requirements / required education level / degree: Master Degree or equivalent

Requirements / required education level / discipline: Engineering

Requirements / skills: • Machine Learning and Data Mining • Knowledge-Based Systems • Data-driven models • Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) • Profilng & behaviour modelling • Multi-Agent Systems • Decision Support Systems • Python, R, Java or related programming languages • Data integration and interoperability • Documenting in Latex • Teamwork

Requirements / specific requirements: To be admitted, candidates must: Meet the requirements for access to the doctorate set out in article 6 of Royal Decree 99/2011, of January 28. Candidates must also comply with all applicable eligibility requirements and regulations of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks programme.

Requirements / required languages / language: ENGLISH

Requirements / required languages / language level: Good

Requirements / required languages / language: CATALAN

Requirements / required languages / language level: Basic

Requirements / required languages / language: SPANISH

Requirements / required languages / language level: Basic

Additional information / benefits: The planned remuneration for DN 2024 is as follows:

Salary: €33,667.67 gross per year Living allowance: €6,235.47 per year Family allowance: €5,796.35 gross per year + two secondments: • Secondment 1. 3-months secondment at UCD (supervised by Dr. Ayala-Cabrera). The DC will receive a specialized training in protection of CI, lessons learned, ND methods, development of incident Hub, sensor information, impacts on water quality and will conduct/receive a data collection/mentoring at VIT. Interaction with DC1, DC9. • Secondment 2. 2-months secondment at REBM (mentor Dr Chesneau) for testing and validating the findings.

Additional information / eligibility criteria: All candidates who cannot provide proof of the required academic qualification will be immediately excluded from the selection process. The selection process will have 2 steps: 1st step: Curriculum Vitae All CV lines should be accompained with documentarion to prove and evidence the content of the line.Those non proved will not be considered

Curriculum vitae will be evaluated according to the following general criteria: The maximum score for candidates who meet all the requirements set out in the job offer will be 10 points. Each category will be scored between 0 and 10. · Required specialization. · Required academic training. · Technical competencies. · Organizational competencies. · Professional experience. · Any aspect of the candidate’s professional profile that the selection committee considers particularly relevant.

CV Final Score = 0.1*required specialization + 0,2* Required Academic Trainer+0,2*Technical Competences + 0,1*Organizational Competences + 0,3* Professional Experience + 0,1*Candidates professional Profile

The minimum qualification to pass the CV step is 5. 2nd Step: only candidates who have obtained a score of 5 or higher in their CV will be shortlisted for the interview. The interview will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

Each category will be scored between 0 and 5

· Suitability to the functional competencies of the position. · Relevance of professional experience. · Any aspect of the candidate’s professional profile that the selection committee considers particularly relevant.

Interview Maximum Score= 0.4*suitability to the functional competencies + 0.4*relevance of professional experience+0.2*aspect of the candidate’s professional profile

The minimum qualification to pass the interview step is 3 Eligible candidates will be ranked from highest to lowest score, which will be the selection criterion.

Additional information / selection process: Once the application submission period has ended, the secretary of the selection committee may contact applicants to request any mandatory documentation that has not been provided, or to ask for additional documentation needed to evaluate the application.

The Evaluation Committee will carry out an initial assessment of the eligible candidates’ CVs and, if deemed appropriate, will invite those who pass this stage to take part in tests and/or interviews. The date and location of the interviews and/or tests will be set by the committee and will be communicated in advance to the selected candidates via the email address provided in their application. Candidates must be available to carry out the test and/or interview using an online platform.

Additional information / comment: Contract duration: The employment contract will have a duration of 36 month starting by 1srt january 2027. Research field: Artificial Intelligence Required Languages: • English - C1 • Spanish or Catalan will be taken into consideration

Documentation: • Motivation letter is required, clearly explaining why the applicant is a strong candidate for this specific position and how their background and interests match the research topic. • Detailed CV • Academic transcripts, • Any other supporting documents requested by the recruiting institution.

Additional information / info website: https://websk.upc.edu/i3waters/

Additional information / info website: https://talenthub.upc.edu/en/jobs/r1/r1-jobs/investigador-a-en-formacio-per-desenvolupar-solucions-innovadores-basades-en-ia-per-a-sistemes-daigua-intel-ligents-codi-i3waters-dc2/investigador-a-en-formacio-per-desenvolupar-solucions-innovadores-basades-en-ia-per-a-sistemes-daigua-intel-ligents-codi-i3waters-dc2

Additional information / info website: https://ideai.upc.edu

Work location / nr job positions: 1

Work location / job organisation institute: Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Center (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

Work location / job country: Spain

Work location / job state province: Barcelona

Work location / job city: Barcelona

Work location / job postal code: 08034

Work location / job street: Jordi Girona, 31

Hiring contact / organisation institute: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)- BarcelonaTECH

Hiring contact / organisation institute type: Higher Education Institute

Hiring contact / country: Spain

Hiring contact / city: Barcelona

Hiring contact / postal code: 08034

Hiring contact / street: C. Jordi Girona, 31

Hiring contact / e mail: i3waters.management@upc.edu

Hiring contact / e mail: personalinvestigador.sp@upc.edu

Hiring contact / e mail: karina.gibert@upc.edu

Hiring contact / website: https://www.upc.edu/

Hiring contact / website: https://websk.upc.edu/i3waters/

Hiring contact / website: https://eio.upc.edu/en/homepages/karina

Application / how to apply: website

Application / application website: https://seuelectronica.upc.edu/en/procedures/call-for-recruitment-of-research-staff-in-training-predoctoral?set_language=en

EU funding / framework programme: Horizon Europe - MSCA

EU funding / cofund nr job position: 1

EU funding / sesam agreement number: 101227354

EU funding / job reference number: i3WaterSDC2

Research field / main research field: Computer science

Research field / sub research field: Other

Research field / main research field: Engineering

Research field / sub research field: Computer engineering

Researcher profile: First Stage Researcher (R1)

Positions: PhD Positions

Contract: Temporary

Job status: Full-time

Application deadline (as exported; timezone unverified): 2026-10-10T21:59:59