Alberto Fernández-Pérez, a researcher with the ECI’s Infrastructure programme has been honoured with a prestigious award for his work assessing the vulnerability of European port infrastructures to climate change.
Dr Fernández-Pérez, a postdoctoral researcher with the Oxford Programme for Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (OPSIS) at the ECI, will be awarded the De Paepe-Willems Prize by the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC) for his PhD work at the Cantabria Hydraulic Institute, specifically for his study entitled 'Risk-based assessment of climate change adaptation strategies for the European port system'.
Dr Fernández-Pérez will receive the award in Busan, South Korea in May. He said:
Receiving this award is, without a doubt, one of the greatest achievements that can be achieved in research within the field of coastal and port engineering.
It is a great honour that PIANC has considered my work worthy of this recognition. On a personal level, it is the icing on the cake for the work carried out during my doctoral period at IHCantabria.
I’d like to give special thanks to my PhD supervisors, Javier Lopez Lara and Iñigo Losada, at the IHCantabria, as well as Jim Hall and Jasper Verschuur for enabling me to carry out part of this research at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), University of Oxford. This recognition would not have been possible without their support and guidance."
This is an award given annually by PIANC, in honour of Gustave Willems and Robert De Paepe, with the aim of encouraging the participation of young professionals and researchers under 40 years of age to encourage the presentation of original and practical works in the fields of port and coastal engineering.
Dr Fernández-Pérez’s study assesses the vulnerability of European port infrastructures to climate change, analyses the most relevant physical risks to which ports are exposed today and in the future due to climate change, and proposes a catalogue of specific adaptation strategies for each port location, with the aim of reducing the most relevant climate risks.
He joined the ECI at the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher in October 2024. His current research focuses on the analysis of interdependencies between various transport and energy systems, in order to identify strategies to strengthen the resilience of these networks to climate stressors.
Previously, he was a predoctoral researcher with IHCantabria. In autumn 2024 he obtained his PhD at the University of Cantabria, after completing a thesis focused on the Development of adaptive and flexible strategies for coastal and port infrastructures in the face of climate change.