PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Bath: Using Carbon Accounting to Identify Embodied Supply-Chain Risk Hotspots

PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Bath: Using Carbon Accounting to Identify Embodied Supply-Chain Risk Hotspots

Quick Decision

Can an organisation use the purchasing data already collected for its carbon footprint to identify upstream disruption risks? This Bath project proposes a screening dataset, connecting geographical and organisational hazards with input-output analysis and validation against historical events and prospective users. The opportunity lies in reducing the burden of initial risk screening. Sector-average carbon emissions are not a company's interruption probability, and a monetary supply-chain model is not an observed map of its suppliers.

The recommendation is Strong but verify fit for quantitative research at the intersection of environmental accounting, climate risk and model validation. The formal route is Mechanical Engineering PhD at the University of Bath, led by Dr Samuel/Sam Cooper. The saved institutional profile lists S.Cooper2@bath.ac.uk; the project notice gives en8sc@bath.ac.uk, retained as the advertised contact. The notice lists 29 November 2026 without a time; the saved Engineering URSA policy states 23:59 UK time (GMT). Whether applications are currently being accepted has not been verified. Expected entry is 4 October 2027, with alternatives by agreement. Supervisor profile, Engineering URSA round

The award is competitive, with Home and Overseas fee support and an unspecified international cap. A personal award, 2027 stipend and funded months remain unknown. Non-UK applicants not currently studying in the UK must meet English requirements before the deadline, without exceptions. A separate university-hosted exact-topic page was not identified; official programme and funding pages verify their respective policies. Early discussion should establish the risk quantity, real data access, validation strategy and personal funding terms.

Research Problem and Doctoral Work

What Carbon Accounting Can Contribute

Organisations may know little about even second-tier suppliers, although disruption upstream can interrupt their own activity. The proposed starting point is existing organisational footprinting: purchasing expenditure is combined with spend-based emissions factors, such as greenhouse-gas equivalents per pound. Environmentally extended input-output analysis links direct emissions and sector relationships to estimate embodied upstream impacts. The thesis asks whether augmenting that framework with disruption information can identify risk hotspots with limited additional reporting effort.

This is a transfer of data structures and analytical methods, not a justified conversion from carbon intensity into hazard probability. Two purchases with similar carbon footprints can differ in location, exposure, vulnerability and substitution options. An industry-average relationship does not establish which particular facility supplies a company. A screening result may help prioritise further investigation while remaining too coarse for a decision about an individual supplier.

GHG Protocol guidance distinguishes spend-based sector averages from supplier-specific, hybrid and physical-data approaches. It also discusses data quality and consistent price bases, including inflation. Greater specificity does not automatically ensure accuracy. These distinctions help explain why the existing carbon account can be useful without becoming a complete supplier-risk assessment. The guidance provides methodological context, not a new reporting-law claim or an off-the-shelf interruption model. Purchased-goods calculation guidance

Proposed Work and the Evidence Needed

The advertisement identifies three concurrent tasks. First, source, refine and apply direct organisational and geographical risk factors, such as flooding or heat damage. Second, develop a propagation framework, with input-output analysis as the default and possible theoretical adaptations. Third, test the resulting datasets, potentially using historical disruption events and engagement with organisations that could use the findings. This is the announced structure; the database, geographical resolution and individual thesis boundary are still unspecified.

The main scientific decisions concern what “risk” means and what the model propagates. Exposure, event probability, production loss and downstream consequences have different units and evidence requirements. Static monetary relationships may be useful for screening, but substitution, inventories, recovery, prices and behavioural changes cannot be assumed to follow from the same coefficients. Possible theoretical adaptations are research questions rather than a completed causal model.

Validation should assess whether the output helps an organisation find meaningful vulnerabilities beyond a simpler baseline. Historical agreement can be informative, but model selection on the same events is weaker than testing held-out dates or regions. User engagement can establish relevance and usability without proving forecast accuracy. These are analytical questions for evaluating the proposed research; the project has not yet demonstrated these results.

A carbon-footprinting consultancy has expressed interest in testing practical use and possibly integrating results into existing software. Its identity, contract, data rights, software access and delivery commitment are not public. This is not a promised placement, signed partnership or guaranteed deployment. The student should ask what happens if private procurement or validation data are unavailable and which useful first-year contribution remains possible.

Field Value and Career Boundary

The topic combines life-cycle assessment, environmental input-output modelling, uncertainty, geospatial data and organisational decision support. The value is a carefully bounded screening method whose assumptions and usefulness can be tested. Climate-adaptation research offers relevant interdisciplinary context, but aggregate hazard exposure should not be promoted as precise corporate loss prediction. Climate-adaptation centre

Data engineering, scientific programming, environmental accounting and critical model interpretation are transferable skills for research, sustainability analysis and consulting. No project-specific graduate jobs, salaries, placements or commercial outcomes were verified. An interested consultancy and a technical accounting standard do not establish labour-market demand for this particular graduate. Career discussion should focus on the methods learned, access to realistic decision problems and the quality of supervision.

School, Programme and Field Context

The University of Bath awards the PhD, through Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Design at Claverton Down. The sustainability/accounting theme does not change registration to a business-school degree or a consultancy qualification. The programme says most students complete in four years, with a two-year minimum and normally four-year maximum. Initial probation, written and oral confirmation, supervised research, thesis and viva form the academic route. These periods are separate from award duration; a studentship is not an employment contract. Mechanical Engineering programme

Cooper's current affiliations include the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, Centre for Climate Adaptation and Environment Research, and Institute of Sustainability and Climate Change. The energy centre covers networks, renewables and life-cycle analysis; the adaptation centre addresses extreme-weather impacts on natural and built environments. They provide a relevant combination of environmental modelling and climate-risk perspectives. Other centre members, grants and facilities are not automatically allocated supervisors or resources for this doctorate. Sustainable energy centre, Climate-adaptation centre

Bath is 125th in QS World University Rankings 2027, compared with 132 in 2026. This is an overall university measure, not a ranking of supply-chain risk, Mechanical Engineering or Cooper's group. The institutional doctoral account reports 92% of research as world-leading or internationally excellent in REF 2021, again institution-wide. Current subject comparisons, group completion statistics and graduate outcomes were not established. QS ranking, Institutional doctoral context

MyDoctoralDevelopment offers research and transferable-skills workshops, coaching and communication support. It is an institutional opportunity rather than an agreed personal curriculum. Ask how IOA, uncertainty, geographical data, research software and user-engagement training will be combined, who provides each element and how confirmation milestones judge progress. Interdisciplinary membership does not create a joint degree, consultancy accreditation or a guaranteed placement. Doctoral development

Supervisor and Lab Assessment

Identity, Methods and Availability

The current institutional record identifies Sam Cooper, CEng, Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, accepting doctoral students, with ORCID 0000-0002-3229-3026. His research uses software models, LCA, IOA and energy/exergy analysis to assess decarbonisation technologies, their operating context and counterfactuals. This is a coherent methodological fit. It is not Imperial's similarly named Samuel J. Cooper working on battery/microstructure topics.

Use S.Cooper2@bath.ac.uk as the current institutional contact while retaining en8sc@bath.ac.uk as the notice's address; the latter should not be silently declared invalid. Formal co-supervisors, meeting frequency, current workload, student outcomes and data-engineering support remain unknown. SCHEMA's 2024–31 co-investigator record demonstrates a current research network, not this applicant's funding or guaranteed access; UKERC Phase 4 ending in October 2024 is historical.

Three original studies provide complementary evidence, with the following coverage limits:

Cooper and colleagues: industrial decarbonisation

Cooper and colleagues' industrial decarbonisation study, Energy Policy 184, 113904, appeared online 27 November 2023 and in the January 2024 issue, DOI 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113904. The complete institutional original abstract and substantive institutional-PDF indexed Method 2.1/scope/limitations were read, not full results, conclusion or supplementary material. It combines N-ZIP cost estimates with IOA under three illustrative allocations: producers absorb costs, consumers pay, or the value chain shares them. The framework uses 2019 inter-industry structure, excludes elasticity/substitution and covers a defined industrial subset, roughly one-sixth of UK emissions. Its reported price effects are conditional illustrations, not forecasts. It supports method-building under explicit assumptions, not validated flood/heat interruption prediction. Industrial-cost original study

Welfle and colleagues: bioenergy sustainability

Welfle and colleagues' bioenergy sustainability study, with Cooper as a co-author, Biomass and Bioenergy 177, 106919, was published online 16 August 2023, DOI 10.1016/j.biombioe.2023.106919. The complete institutional abstract and substantive institutional-PDF indexed Method 2.3 were read. BSIM maps 126 sustainability indicators across 16 UK cases; expert workshops introduce the framework and compare assumptions to improve consistency. It reports potential social benefits and recurring infrastructure, feedstock mobilisation, techno-economic and carbon-stock risks. These are framework-assessed patterns beyond carbon alone, interpreted within case boundaries and expert calibration. Full results, conclusion and supplementary settings were not read; it is not an empirical model of company-specific flood interruption or a universally approved policy tool. Bioenergy original study

Passos and colleagues (2025): Swedish hazards

Passos and colleagues' 2025 Swedish hazard study is an external original, not a Bath/Cooper-team publication. Published 15 August 2025 in npj Natural Hazards 2, 81, DOI 10.1038/s44304-025-00129-9, it links 2005–22 municipal hazard/supply anomalies to a 64-industry national IO model. Selected publisher Methods, Results and Discussion, including limitations, were read. Polynomial complexity uses five-fold cross-validation, while monthly models are selected by CV performance; this does not establish transfer to a new country or year. Results indicate associations and modelled cascading impacts, explicitly not causality. Only Sweden is modelled and imports/exports are excluded; insurance data omit uninsured or other infrastructure impacts. Aggregate monetary outputs are not independently observed total losses, and individual hazard headlines should not simply be added. External hazard original study

These are two relevant team originals and one external methodological comparison, with unequal reading scopes; neither three complete team papers nor code reproduction is covered. The 2024 Joule paper is explicitly a review, used only as industrial-decarbonisation context. It is not a fourth original experiment or evidence that this student receives industrial data. Industrial review abstract

Funding, Application and Living Cost

Current Competition and Submission

The Engineering URSA round documented in October 2026 is for October 2027, closing 29 November 2026 at 23:59 UK/GMT. The exact project's date has no clock; the time comes from the scheme. Expected entry is 4 October 2027. An alternative requires supervisor and Doctoral College agreement and separate confirmation that funding can be retained. The programme's general international deadline three months before entry does not extend the scholarship deadline.

Submit a formal Mechanical Engineering PhD application, choose University of Bath URSA and enter the exact project and supervisor in the relevant first/second-choice fields. Applicants may choose at most two projects. The programme requires two references, at least one academic from the most recent place of study, and a personal statement covering motivation, research experience and career plans. Its 1,000-word research proposal is for an applicant's own idea, not automatically required for this advertised topic. Confirm actual form requirements with doctoraladmissions@bath.ac.uk. Programme application guidance

URSA can cover Home or Overseas tuition, maintenance and up to £1,000 annual training support. The training allocation is not disposable living income. The Engineering policy's up to 3.5 years is a general maximum, not this student's confirmed 42-month award. A normal four-year PhD does not imply four years of maintenance. The Overseas cap has no verified percentage. The notice's £21,805 is a 2026/27 reference, not an established 2027/28 personal rate; UKRI's published annual figure cannot settle the individual award. URSA policy, UKRI guidance

Fees and a Usable Budget

The published 2027/28 Overseas Engineering research fee is £31,350 per year. Continuing fees can increase by up to 8% annually, and deferred entry may change the basis. This is potential exposure when funding is absent or ends, not a duplicate personal bill during full tuition coverage. Before acceptance, obtain the actual award rate, months, indexation, fee increases and completion/writing-up arrangements in writing. Engineering tuition

The official 2025/26 historical living budget is £405 weekly/£21,060 annually. Its total includes £37 of off-campus utilities, even alongside a halls scenario. If the actual housing contract includes bills, a conditional no-double-count calculation is £368 weekly; this is an analytical scenario, not a second official quotation. Average rent is £230 weekly on a 51-week contract, with an off-campus £750 monthly excluding bills reference. Verify the remaining week, deposit, relocation and 2027 prices. Doctoral accommodation is not generally guaranteed. Historical budget, Doctoral FAQ

Visa and IHS are personally funded. October 2026 references are £558 for a Student visa and £776 per year for the student IHS; the actual total depends on permission length and part-year charging. Future charges may change. CAS, funds, English and permission are individual requirements. With no confirmed 2027 stipend or personal months, there is no reliable surplus calculation or basis for treating relocation as a covered training expense. Student visa, IHS charges

Applicant Fit and Preparation

The project requires a first/2:1 UK honours degree or international equivalent; a Master's is advantageous. LCA/IOA experience and/or effective dataset analysis is ideal, not a requirement to have mastered all three. The generic programme also admits an appropriate Merit Master's route, subject to project assessment. Evidence of quantitative analysis and an ability to question model boundaries can demonstrate fit without claiming prior expertise in every method.

Applicants from under-represented groups are encouraged. If circumstances affected educational attainment, applicants may explain them in the application form; a short paragraph at the end of the personal statement is suggested. If an applicant states in the application that they have a disability, the Disability Service will contact them to discuss the support they need.

Chinese applicants have a positive route through worldwide equivalent-qualification admission and Overseas URSA eligibility. The official China PGR indexed wording and currently displayed direct page differ in coverage; a definitive current China-specific doctoral percentage is unresolved. Do not convert taught-postgraduate percentages into a PhD cut-off or assume a Master's automatically settles equivalence. Ask admissions to assess the actual institution, degree, grades and research preparation. International qualifications

English is IELTS 6.5 overall, each component 6.0. TOEFL taken before 21 January 2026 requires 90 overall, each 21; on or after that date, 4.5 overall, each 4.0. Tests must meet the 24-month period before entry. An English-taught degree may support an individually assessed exemption, generally within two years, with specified exceptions. Chinese medium-of-instruction documentation is not automatic approval. Non-UK applicants not currently UK-studying must satisfy English before the funding deadline, without exceptions; an exemption needs timely confirmation, not an assumed later offer condition. Doctoral English rules

Mechanical Engineering is ATAS-covered. China is not nationality-exempt, but individual subject classification and requirements follow the actual offer/CAS and immigration advice. This is not a nationality ban or guaranteed clearance. Prepare transcripts, research examples, references and accepted English evidence, with a focused statement explaining how existing skills transfer to screening and validation. ATAS rules

Next Actions and Questions to Verify

Before applying, ask which IO database, year, sector/geography and procurement data are available; define whether the output concerns exposure, disruption probability or consequences. Ask what historical events can support held-out validation and how screening usefulness will be tested against a simpler baseline. Establish a viable thesis scope if private data or the consultancy's participation do not materialise. Obtain a current Chinese-qualification assessment and accepted English or exemption evidence before the funding deadline.

Before acceptance, confirm formal co-supervision, regular guidance, compute/data-engineering support, data/IP rights and the consultancy's actual commitment. Obtain personal funding months, 2027 maintenance, tuition/indexation and support beyond the general award cap. Confirm the applicable ATAS/CAS and start conditions in time for entry. Finally, update housing and upfront immigration costs. These questions qualify a credible application route; they do not justify presenting speculative company-risk precision or guaranteed full-duration funding.

Evidence and Sources

The sources below include the exact project notice and the institutional, programme, funding, policy and research materials used for this assessment. Original-study reading scopes are disclosed above; full-paper coverage, supplementary-material review and code replication are not claimed.

Core Institutional and Programme Sources

• Exact project notice (FindAPhD)
• Current supervisor identity and contact
• Mechanical Engineering PhD
• Sustainable Energy Systems centre
• Climate Adaptation and Environment centre
• Doctoral development
• QS institutional ranking
• Institutional doctoral context

Original Studies and Methodological Context

• Industrial-cost original: abstract and indexed method/scope
• Bioenergy original: abstract and indexed expert methods
• External Swedish hazard original: selected methods/results/discussion
• GHG Protocol purchased-goods methods
• Joule industrial review: contextual abstract

Funding, Application, Cost and Immigration Sources

• Current Engineering URSA competition
• Doctoral English and exemptions
• International qualification guidance
• 2027/28 Engineering fees
• 2025/26 historical budget
• Doctoral FAQ and housing
• UKRI rates: 2026/27 reference
• Student visa
• IHS charges
• ATAS rules