Dr. Mona Hemmati on Climate Risk and Resilience Engineering

2026-07-17 Linda Jones

Advancing Quantitative Climate Risk Assessment

Dr. Mona Hemmati is a postdoctoral research scientist specializing in climate risk dynamics, coastal resilience, and socioeconomic vulnerability modeling at Columbia Climate School.

Integration of hydro-meteorological models with socioeconomic indicators
Probabilistic damage modeling for extreme storm and coastal surge events
Decision frameworks tailored for urban flood mitigation and policy design

Methodological Approaches in Resilience Modeling

Focus Area	Traditional Deterministic Model	Coupled Probabilistic Framework
Uncertainty Quantification	Single scenario threshold assessment	Multivariate ensemble projections over 100-year return intervals
Infrastructure Vulnerability	Static physical asset damage curves	Dynamic multi-sector network interdependency models
Policy Application	Uniform structural engineering guidelines	Adaptive pathways balancing equitable community protection

Framework for Translating Climate Projections into Action

Downscale global climate simulations to localized catchment resolutions below 5 km
Synthesize census-level social vulnerability indicators with physical inundation depth grids
Calibrate multivariate fragility functions using empirical historical loss records
Deliver open-source decision-support tools for municipal and state stakeholders

Selected Research Domains and Interdisciplinary Collaborations

The portfolio bridges atmospheric hazards, environmental economics, and civil engineering to support real-world resilience decisions.

Hydro-climatology: Assessing changes in rainfall frequency and compound flooding events under changing atmospheric conditions.
Socioeconomic Equity: Mapping disproportionate post-disaster disruption and identifying recovery trajectories for under-resourced communities.
Infrastructure Systems: Stress-testing transportation and power networks against high-impact, low-probability coastal hazards.

Featured Publications

Climate Risk Evaluation Standards, Benchmarks and Frameworks

Robust climate adaptation planning requires verifiable standards to assess physical vulnerability under non-stationary environmental dynamics. This framework integrates cross-validation against observational baselines, statistical stress tests, and…

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Research Portfolio of Dr. Mona Hemmati on Compound Climate Risk and Vu

Dr. Mona Hemmati is a climate risk scientist and postdoctoral research scholar at the Columbia Climate School, Columbia University. Her scholarly work synthesizes atmospheric dynamics, hydrodynamic modeling, and socioeconomic vulnerability indices…