Project Description

Our research seeks to characterize and quantify the factors and dynamic feedbacks that help create socially and biophysically resilient cities. More specifically, under extreme climate events, such as flooding, heatwaves, and droughts, urban vegetation has the potential to improve health and well-being of urban residents and relieve pressures on physical infrastructure. Advances in infrastructure, technologies, and planning are urgently needed to create the adaptive capacity for cities to recover from these acute shocks while recognizing that chronic stresses (e.g., unemployment, crime) limit resilience. We assert that provisioning of ecosystem services (i.e., the goods and services that humans obtain from nature) from urban vegetation will positively affect resilience of physical assets particularly energy distribution and water collection/distribution systems. We also argue that socioeconomic stresses, such as high unemployment, aging infrastructure, and chronic food and water shortages, inherently reduce the adaptive capacity of city to recover from acute shocks. Our project will build models, identify technologies, and evaluate strategies that create socially and biophysically resilient cities. We will integrate ecosystem services, social assets and vulnerabilities, and energy-water systems modeling to understand the complexities and dynamic feedbacks among the built environment and its residents to enhance sustainability and livability.

Start Date 

April 2020

Postdoc Qualifications

Candidates must have a PhD, preferably in engineering, sustainability science, ecology, or a closely related discipline. Candidates with a publication record demonstrating experience working in interdisciplinary teams using quantitative methods will be especially competitive. Strong spatial analysis skills (e.g., ArcGIS) and knowledge of major programing languages for processing large amounts of heterogeneous datasets (e.g., R, Python) are required. The postdoc will assume a leadership role in publishing project results and must have strong written and oral communication skills.

Co-advisors 

Sara McMillan
mcmill@purdue.edu
Agricultural & Biological Engineering
https://saramcmillan.weebly.com/

Brady Hardiman
hardimanb@purdue.edu
Forestry and Natural Resources
Environmental and Ecological Engineering
https://www.purdue.edu/fnr/sites/hardiman/

Collaborators

Roshanak Nateghi
rnateghi@purdue.edu
Industrial Engineering
Environmental and Ecological Engineering
https://engineering.purdue.edu/LASCI

Zhao Ma
zhaoma@purdue.edu
Forestry and Natural Resources
https://ag.purdue.edu/fnr/Pages/profile.aspx?strAlias=zhaoma

References 

Hardiman, B. S.*, J. Wang, L. R. Hutyra, C. Gately, J. Getson, and M. Friedl. 2017. Accounting for urban biogenic fluxes in regional carbon budgets. Science of The Total Environment 592:366–372.

Johnson, J.L., Zanotti, L., Ma, Z.*, David, J.Y., Johnson, D.R., Kirkham, A. and Carothers, C., 2018. Interplays of Sustainability, Resilience, Adaptation and Transformation. In Handbook of Sustainability and Social Science Research (pp. 3-25). Springer, Cham.

McMillan, S.K.*, H.F. Wilson, C.L. Tague, D.M. Hanes, S. Inamdar, D.L. Karwan, T. Loecke, J. Morrison, S.F. Murphy, P. Vidon. 2018. Before the storm: Antecedent conditions as regulators of hydrologic and biogeochemical response to extreme climate events. Biogeochemistry, doi.org/10.1007/s10533-018-0482-6.

Mukherjee, S. and Nateghi, R.*, 2019. A Data‐Driven Approach to Assessing Supply Inadequacy Risks Due to Climate‐Induced Shifts in Electricity Demand. Risk Analysis, 39(3), pp.673-694.
Obringer, R., Kumar, R. and Nateghi, R.*, 2019. Analyzing the climate sensitivity of the coupled water-electricity demand nexus in the Midwestern United States. Applied Energy, 252, p.113466.