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Dr William Harcourt

Dr William Harcourt
Dr William Harcourt
Dr William Harcourt

Interdisciplinary Fellow

Accepting PhDs

About
Email Address
william.harcourt@abdn.ac.uk
Office Address
Room 111 St. Mary's Building
Old Aberdeen Campus
Elphinstone Road
AB24 3UF

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School/Department
School of Geosciences
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Pure

Biography

Will Harcourt is an Interdisciplinary Fellow at the University of Aberdeen leading the development of digital twin technology applied to the Arctic cryosphere. He graduated from the University of Exeter with a 1st Class Honours degree in Geography before moving to the University of Edinburgh to study for a MSc in Geographical Information Science (GIS). Between 2017 and 2018, he was a Research Assistant at Edinburgh Napier University, leading the first ever national scale analysis of seagrass change in the world. In 2022, he completed a PhD at the University of St Andrews where he developed millimetre-wave radar as a tool for mapping and monitoring glaciers. He then joined the University of Aberdeen in 2022 as a Lecturer before starting the interdisciplinary research fellowship in 2023.

Will's research interests span across multiple disciplines, including glaciology, remote sensing & Earth Observation, data science, artificial intelligence, Arctic science and many more. He works across several international organisations such as the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) and the Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society (SAGES), amongst others before. Through these roles, he builds new community tools, organises webinars & workshops and develops future science strategies/priorities. Will also leaves the office to work in the field and has led and participated in several expeditions to locations such as Svalbard, Iceland, the European Alps, the Scottish Highlands and locally within the UK.

Qualifications

  • BSc Geography 
    2016 - University of Exeter 
  • MSc Geographical Information Science (GIS) 
    2017 - University of Edinburgh 
  • PhD Physics 
    2022 - University of St Andrews 

External Memberships

  • International Glaciological Society (IGS)
  • European Geosciences Union (EGU)
  • Royal Geographical Society (RGS)
  • Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Society and Society (SAGES)
  • Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS)
Research

Research Overview

My research is highly interdisciplinary and covers subject areas in geographical sciences, computer sciences, physics and more! My research can be grouped into three main area:

Glacier Surges

  • Surges are quasi-periodical cycles of fast and slow. Such glaciers are clustered in geographical locations, suggesting their is a shared driver.
  • I have a strong interest in understanding Arctic surge-type glaciers, particularly in Svalbard where surge-type glaciers are particularly well studied.
  • Quantifying glacier surge behaviour and their driving processes (e.g. basal sliding, energy build-up and release, impacts on mass balance).

Tidewater glacier Dynamics

  • Iceberg Calving: The process of iceberg calving and its contribution to mass loss across the Arctic. Measuring this process and analysing its drivers.
  • Response to Climate Change: Quantifying the long-term impact of climate change on tidewater glacier dynamics and mass balance

Arctic Cryosphere

  • I have a strong interest in the wider cryosphere across the Arctic, particularly in Svalbard, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.
  • Sea ice dynamics and relationships to shipping activity, particularly through the development of new data products and assisting end-users with real-time sea ice data.
  • Measuring and monitoring snow cover across the Arctic and in Scotland.

Digital Twins

  • Developing digital twins for chaotic environment systems such as glaciers (e.g. Svalbard, the Greenland Ice Sheet)
  • Observing Systems: Construction of inter-connected systems to observe environmental processes and document their changes over time.

Applications of AI in Cryospheric Science

  • Machine learning: Application of Artificial Intelligence (e.g. Machine Learning and Deep Learning) to study environmental systems (e.g. glaciers), often using remote sensing data.
  • Foundation models: Large-scale, pretrained models that can be fine-tuned using domain specific data sets.
  • Image segmentation: Developing new methods for classifying cryosphere features in satellite imagery such as sea ice, snow, glacier surface features (e.g. crevasses).

Remote Sensing/Earth Observation (EO)

  • Remote Sensing: Development of different sensors and techniques for mapping/monitoring environmental systems, particularly glaciers.
  • Earth Observation: Harnessing large-scale satellite data for regional/global analysis of the Earth system.
  • Data Science and Statistics: Development of data processing/analysis techniques for understanding environmental systems, error/uncertainty in environmental data.

Research Areas

Accepting PhDs

I am currently accepting PhDs in Geography and Environment, Computing Science.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.

Email Me

Geography and Environment

Accepting PhDs
View Research Area

Computing Science

Accepting PhDs
View Research Area

Research Specialisms

  • Glaciology and Cryospheric Systems
  • Machine Learning
  • Remote Sensing

Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Funding and Grants

A full list of successful grants as PI or Co-I from 2019 can be found here: https://williamharcourt.co.uk/grants/

 

Datasets

  • "03_Ortho_Forefield_Subset.tif", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    This file is part of "Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard".
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/q1w9t0
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • "03_Ortho_20230809_Glacier.tif", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    This file is part of "Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard".
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/snypu0
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • "03_Ortho_Forefield.tif", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    This file is part of "Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard"
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/8azv81
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard: 02_DEM_20230801_Glacier.tif

    :unav
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/yytqm5
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • "03_Ortho_20230808_Glacier.tif", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    This file is part of "Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard".
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/og4oh7
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • "03_Ortho_20230811_Glacier_Subset_B.tif", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    This file is part of "Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard".
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/0spl08
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • "01_Images_20230808.zip", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    This file is part of "Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard".
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/cfk0x8
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • "03_Ortho_20230812_Glacier.tif", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    TIFF Image
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/vgv45b
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard

    This database contains drone-based mapping data of the crevassed and surging glacier of Borebreen in Svalbard, Norway. The dataset was generated using a structure-from-motion (SfM) method using drone-based imagery. The data was processed with Agisoft...
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard: 02_DEM_Forefield.tif

    1.0
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/bbirof
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard: 03_Ortho_20230811_Glacier.tif

    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/rvo5if
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard: 02_DEM_20230808_Glacier.tif

    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/u4n9sh
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • "02_DEM_20230811_Glacier_Subset_A.tif", Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard:

    This file is part of "Drone-based mapping of calving rates of Borebreen in Svalbard".
    DOI
    10.18710/b553mb/abwhwf
    Publisher
    DataverseNO
    View Details

  • Svalbard Surge Database 2024 (RGI2000-v7.0-G-07)

    We have developed a new database of surge-type glaciers in Svalbard by combining existing compilations and reviewing studies examining their dynamics. Our database is based upon the Global Land and Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) database (König ...
    DOI
    10.5281/zenodo.15240754
    Publisher
    Zenodo
    View Details
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