Meet our faculty, Professor Yeowon Kim
Dr. Yeowon Kim is an interdisciplinary scientist, water systems engineer, and urban resilience researcher who promotes resilient infrastructure systems and sustainable cities facing climate disturbances with a particular focus on urban flooding. Her research investigates ways to implement “Safe-to-fail” approach that calls for infrastructure transformations through system design and operation for a long-term urban sustainability and resilience. As cities face increasing risks associated with the non-stationarity of climate change, the ability to deploy infrastructure to protect people and maintain services is becoming a major urban challenge. While climate projection has improved substantially, there remains significant uncertainty in risk prediction due to interrelationships of systems, nonlinearities in biophysical processes, and socioeconomic shifts. This indicates a need for a new approach to infrastructure design that manages environmental hazards, but recognizes potential system failures from unforeseen risks, and focuses on adaptive capacity that does not compromise the entire urban system upon infrastructure failure. Her research on “Safe-to-fail” infrastructure design and management highlights the importance of incorporating synergies and trade-offs of key social, ecological, and technological systems (SETS) dynamics and resilience capabilities and vulnerabilities in urban systems for the decision-making of infrastructure development and climate adaptation in responding to weather extremes.
Dr. Kim has a keen interest in advocating interdisciplinary early-career scientists and practitioners working on urban resilience globally for their career development. She is a core part of an interdisciplinary research team that lead state-of-art urban sustainability and climate resilience research projects in North America and globally such as Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN, urexsrn.net) and Nature-based solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene (NATURA, natura-net.org).
Moving forward, Dr. Kim is interested in continuing to employ inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to conduct solutions-oriented engineering research that enhances the understanding of urban sustainability and infrastructure resilience against climate risks, co-develop knowledge systems for climate change adaptation with communities and practitioners, and advance theories and models for urban flood resilience.
“To me, being an educator is a way of appreciating the various forms of life experiences that have enriched me and contributed to who I am today as a successful interdisciplinary scholar. I want to address the challenges of promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion at Carleton University as it relates to all practices within higher education from mentoring students with diverse backgrounds to designing research projects for equitable and inclusive urban resilience for a sustainable future.”
If you would like to know more about her work, please contact yeowon.kim@carleton.ca or connect with her on Twitter @Yeowon__Kim.