Sajani Kandel
Climate adaptation; hydrologic decision support; usability testing, user-centered research, community-engaged research; environmental justice; equity, justice, and inclusion; extreme heat vulnerability assessment
Background & Expertise
Sajani Kandel, PhD, is a research scientist, interdisciplinary decision support researcher at the Institute on the Environment, where she leads NOAA- and CIROH-funded research focused on improving the usability of hydrologic decision support systems. Her work bridges environmental science, social and behavioral science, risk communication, and user-centered design to ensure that complex hydrologic decision support products, such as NOAA flood inundation maps, are usable and accessible to targeted audiences. Her research combines experimental surveys, usability testing and co-production to improve the understanding and usability of these products in real-world decision contexts.
Before joining IonE, she led community-engaged research on heat vulnerability assessment in historically underserved urban neighborhoods, including spatial analysis of heat exposure, and youth-focused participatory action research in Boston that engaged the next generation of climate scientists and adaptation practitioners in community heat resilience.
Kandel holds a PhD in environmental sciences from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and serves as an at-large member of the American Meteorological Society's board on enterprise decision support.
Spotlight on Recent Interdisciplinary Research
How can we help immigrant farmers better adapt to Midwestern farming? What can we learn from Cuba’s National Health System? How can we make drought outlook graphics more intuitive and useful? These are some questions considered in recent publications authored by Institute on the Environment research staff and affiliates.