Immediate Vacancy Available for Master/PhD Position With Monthly Stipend

Immediate Vacancy Available for Master/PhD Position With Monthly Stipend (for Malaysian only); without monthly stipend (for International, but could benefit from the research facilities)

Project Title: Forecasting the Lake Water Level Variations using Satellite-based and Deep Learning Technique

Candidate with the following criteria is invited to apply:

• Currently hold a Bachelor or Master degree in Civil, Environmental, Coastal, Marine, Computer, Big Data Engineering/GIS/Remote Sensing/Geomatics. Any other related area can be considered.
• Positivity, team working and self-driven/discipline is a must. Good writing skills in English.
• The candidate is expected for reasonable multi-tasking due to the provision of a monthly stipend of RM1800/RM2000 (Master/Ph.D.), includes, but not limited to field data collection and analysis, traveling, and academic paper published in reputable journals.
• A candidate is expected to register as Full-Time Student in UTM Johor Bahru. A candidate is responsible for the cost of the tuition fees.
• Intake commenced from October 2021 for 2 years (extension is possible depending on available funds).
• Skills required: Basic programming and any Digital Image Processing Software.

Benefits:

• Monthly stipend of RM1800/RM2000 (Master/PhD);
• Workstation with conducive working space in our laboratory;
• Facilities related to the research activities (e.g. data, a field trip for data collection, etc);

Interested candidate is invited to email your resume to nurulhazrina@utm.my

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nurul Hazrina Idris

Head of Tropical Map Research Group

Fellow Member of Geospatial and Digital Earth Centre (INSTeG)
Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru

Abstract

For sustainable dam management, information such as lake levels is essential to understand the impact of climate change and extreme weather. Lake level is a key hydrological parameter, which is sensitive to both regional and climate variations, human disturbances and lake bathymetry changes. Water-level changes in lakes were traditionally derived from gauge data. While gauging stations can provide accurate water-level observations,
only limited gauged water-level measurements are available in remote areas, particularly in Temenggor Lake.
Temenggor Lake; located at Royal Belum Forest, is the second-largest dam in Malaysia supplying water for domestic use since 1999. Under the tropical climate conditions, the reservoir area is affected by the seasonal climate condition resulting in declining dam water level during the hot season, and flooding during the wet season. The technology of satellite altimetry has been widely used for monitoring inland waters for more than 30 years,
however, such study has yet to be conducted in Malaysia due to its’ relatively small size of lakes/rivers. Taking advantage of the recent and advanced technology of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) altimetry, the proposed project will exploit the high resolution and accurate lake level data from the Sentinel-3A satellite for forecasting the lake levels, which can help to evaluate the impact of climate change on regional water resources. This project is
related to the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are goal 6: Clean Water and
Sanitation, goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, and goal 14: Life below Water.