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Sudeshna Kumar
- Position:
Postdoctoral Researcher - Main Research Field:
Socio-environmental systems modelling concerning climate change - BC3 Research Line:
5. Research Line Integrated Modelling of Coupled Human-natural Systems - Contact information:
Email address: sudeshna.kumar@bc3research.org
Contact phone: 944 01 46 90 - Scopus Author ID: 57217159304
- ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6490-9481
Short CV
I am a climate-conscious urbanist with a specialization in neighbourhood sustainability assessment employing machine learning techniques such as Bayesian networks. My research focuses on the interplay of climate change, sustainable development, and urbanity hinging on the climate change impacts and exploring the concepts of climate vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation.
I hold a bachelor’s in Architecture from Jadavpur University, India and master's in city planning specialization in integrating transit policies for land use management mitigating climate change in eco-fragile zones, and a Ph.D. in neighborhood sustainability assessment from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. In the formative years of my Ph.D., I was part of a collaborative practicum between DUSP MIT, Boston, USA and IIT Kharagpur, India during Spring 2016-17. The practicum developed a sustainable business model that would provide impetus to the sustainable growth of an underdeveloped region of West Bengal, India, through nurturing a creative economy and enhancing urban equity of a previously ‘no build zone’ in the ‘Khoai’ region of Santiniketan. I secured the EPP Fellowship at Eawag-ETH, Dübendorf, Zurich from September–December 2021 making me the first female EPP Fellow from India. I have developed CRUSAF- ‘A climate resilient urban sanitation assessment framework ' which involved a hybrid analysis instrumenting geospatial mapping and a scoring matrix.
My academic work looks at the specific dimensions of sustainability both at the micro and meso-urban scales consolidating the aspects of technology and temporal dynamism considering the cross-cutting concepts of vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to climate change. My research interests are socio-environmental systems modelling and developing a knowledge matrix embodying the perspectives of social equity to climate change and participatory approaches within the modelling framework.
Journal Articles
- 2024
- Aznarez, C., Kumar, S., Marquez-Torres, A., Pascual, U., Baró, F. 2024. Ecosystem service mismatches evidence inequalities in urban heat vulnerability. Science of the Total Environment. 922. DOI (10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.171215).
- 2023
- Marquez Torres, A., Signorello, G., Kumar, S., Adamo, G., Villa, F., Balbi, S. 2023. Fire risk modeling: An integrated and data-driven approach applied to Sicily. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. 23. (9) 2937-2959. DOI (10.5194/nhess-23-2937-2023).
Affiliation previous to BC3
Kumar, S., Santara, A., & Banerji, H. (2020). Pentagram Sustainability Model: Framing of a holistic sustainability dimension model for assessment of Neighbourhood-level urban communities (NLUCs) using a semi-automated systematic literature review. InternationalReview for Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development A: Planning Strategies and Design Concepts, 8(2), 100–117.
http://dx.doi.org/10.14246/irspsda.8.2_100
Kumar, S., Bhaumik, S., Banerji, H. (2020). ‘Methodology for framing indicators for assessing eco-socio-cultural sustainability of the Neighbourhood level urban communities in Indian Megacities: Evidence from Kolkata’. Social Indicators Research 152(3).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02559-6
Kumar, S., & Banerji, H. (2021). Bayesian network modeling for economic-socio-cultural sustainability of neighborhood-level urban communities: Reflections from Kolkata, an Indian megacity. Sustainable Cities and Society, 103632.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103632
Book chapters
- 2022
- Sudeshna Kumar, Ayyoob Sharifi. 2022 SDGs in Global South Cities for Building Resilience to Climate Change. In: Walter Leal Filho, Theam Foo Ng, Usha Iyer-Raniga, Artie Ng, Ayyoob Sharifi. In: SDGs in the Asia and Pacific Region. 1st. Cham Swizterland. Springer International Publishing. L,950 1-29. ISBN ISSN 2731-5576.