CREST Faculty affiliate and Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at CCNY, Naresh Devineni welcomed a new Post-Doctoral Fellow, Seonho Kim in February 2024. Seonho’s work will focus on better understanding the role of water demand on drought risks.
Seonho’s research aims to understand how managing water demands can play a crucial role in mitigating drought risks. Seonho believes that there is a lack of reliable information that analyzes the relationship between water demand and drought risks. This gap hampers the inclusion of water demand control in drought planning. Seonha has developed a novel reservoir drought index (RDI) and associated risk measures which are responsive to water supply and demand, using the sequent peak algorithm used in reservoir design. He elaborated, “Dr Devineni and I analyzed varying drought risks under different water demand scenarios derived from historical data. Our study is the first of its kind to assess the changes in drought risks with consideration of water demand management.”
Seonho expects to make scientific contributions in areas such as climate change, urban planning, and water related disaster management. He said, “Furthermore, I hope that our contributions will help in ensuring the safety of citizens.”
Seonho keenly looks forward to his journey as a postdoc at CCNY. He is excited about the exposure to new opportunities, resources at CCNY, and the chance to work with his advisor, Dr. Devineni. He commented, “New research topics, methodologies, networks, and more will help me become a more robust scholar since I get to expand my research field and theoretical backgrounds, shift my perspectives, and foster synergies with new networks.” Seonho is also excited to learn about the CREST affiliate’s involvement in HyperFACETS and hopes to collaborate to enhance his research outcomes.
Prior to joining CCNY, Seonho served as a post-doctoral fellow in Sejong University in South Korea after receiving his Ph.D. at the university in 2021. In 2023, he came to the United States as a visiting scholar to research with Dr. Sankar Arumugam at the North Carolina State University. In February 2024, he started his research with Dr. Devineni at CCNY. He said, “I have focused on modeling the rainfall-runoff process and investigating hydrological responses to climatological forecasting or projections such as weather radar, seasonal forecasting, and climate changes scenarios. Recently, I have developed an interest in deep learning processes, and I have applied a deep learning model to analyze water-related problems. At CCNY, I have concentrated on topics that control demand to mitigate drought risks.”
