Suwan Shen

Areas of Interest

Climate Risk and Adaptation, Resilient and Smart Infrastructure, GeoAI and Spatial Intelligence, Community Resilience, Sustainable and Resilient Transportation

Education

• PhD, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Florida, Gainesville
• M.A. in Transportation Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville
• M.A. in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Florida, Gainesville
• B.A. in Geographical Information Science, Southeast University, China

Bio

Dr. Suwan Shen’s research bridges climate risk, resilient infrastructure, GeoAI, and community resilience, with a focus on how communities can adapt and thrive in the face of climate risk. She examines how sea level rise, flooding, and wildfires affect transportation and other critical infrastructure systems, and develops strategies to ensure that vulnerable populations—such as older adults and coastal communities—maintain access to essential services.

Her work has focused on the impacts of climate stressors on transportation systems and critical infrastructure, community vulnerability, and adaptation planning. She has led projects supported by FEMA, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the State of Hawaiʻi, including the FEMA-funded Resilience Hub Action Plan to strengthen community preparedness, the development of a statewide Climate Vulnerability Framework, and studies examining the resilience of disaster relief supply chains in island communities.

She has also published studies on sea level rise adaptation and aging, food insecurity among older adults, and infrastructure resilience in disaster contexts. As an educator, Dr. Shen emphasizes hands-on, problem-solving approaches, encouraging students to apply advanced spatial and data science methods to real-world planning issues and to think critically and creatively about the challenges of a changing environment.

Courses Instructed

• PLAN 601 – Planning Methods
• PLAN 473 – GIS for Community Planning
• PLAN 656 – Advanced GIS and Geospatial AI
• PLAN 751 – Practicum

Selected Books and Publications

Liu, D., & Shen, S. (2026). Impact of sea level rise on aging population’s accessibility to essential services in Honolulu, Hawaii. Travel Behaviour and Society, 42, 101139.

Shen, S., Kim, K., & Liu, D. (2023). Aging in Place or Moving to Higher Ground: Older Adults’ Adaptation to Sea Level Rise in Honolulu, Hawaii. Sustainability, 15(12), 9535.

Shen, S., Chang, R. H., Kim, K., & Julian, M. (2022). Challenges to maintaining disaster relief supply chains in island communities: disaster preparedness and response in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Natural Hazards, 1-27.

Lee, J. J. Y., Shen, S., & Nishita, C. (2022). Development of Older Adult Food Insecurity Index to Assess Food Insecurity of Older Adults. The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging, 26(7), 739-746.

Shen, S., Kim, K. (2020). Assessment of Transportation System Vulnerabilities to Tidal Flooding in Honolulu, Hawaii. Transportation Research Record.

Budd, E., Babcock, R. W., Spirandelli, D., Shen, S., & Fung, A. (2020). Sensitivity Analysis of a Groundwater Infiltration Model and Sea-Level Rise Applications for Coastal Sewers. Water, 12(3), 923.

Shen, S., & Ristroph, E. B. (2020). The Relationship between Climate Vulnerability and Disaster Declarations: A Case Study of Flood-Prone Indigenous Communities in Alaska. Natural Hazards Review, 21(1), 05019004.

Shen, S. (2019). Critical Infrastructure and Climate Change. In The Routledge Handbook of Urban Resilience. Burayidi, M. A., Allen, A., Twigg, J., & Wamsler, C. (Eds.). Routledge.

Qiang, Y., Shen, S., & Chen, Q. (2019). Visibility analysis of oceanic blue space using digital elevation models. Landscape and Urban Planning, 181, 92-102.

Zhang, K., Sun, D. J., Shen, S., & Zhu, Y. (2017). Analyzing spatiotemporal congestion pattern on urban roads based on taxi GPS data. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 10(1).

Shen, S., Feng, X., & Peng, Z. R. (2016). A framework to analyze vulnerability of critical infrastructure to climate change: the case of a coastal community in Florida. Natural Hazards, 84(1), 589-609.

Research Projects

Oahu Resilience Hub Action Plan. 2021-2023. City and County of Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency.

Assessing the Transportation Adaptation Options to Sea Level Rise for Safety Enhancement in RITI Communities through a Structured Decision Making Framework, Center for Safety Equity in Transportation (CSET). 2019-2020.

Developing an Analytical Framework for Optimizing Disaster Relief Preparedness to Coastal Hazards: A Preliminary Investigation of Factors Affecting Supply Chain Resilience in Hawaii, Pacific Southwest Region 9 University Transportation Center. 2019-2020.

Building Capacity for Climate Adaptation: Assessing the Vulnerability of Transportation Infrastructure to Sea Level Rise for Safety Enhancement in RITI Communities. CSET. 2018-2019. 

Physical Exposure and Social Sensitivity: Estimating Sea Level Rise Impacts to Transportation through Vulnerability Assessment and Social Media Analysis. Pacific Southwest Region 9 University Transportation Center. 2017-2018. https://www.metrans.org/news/psr-research-uc-davis-university-hawaii-and-northern-arizona-university 

Waipahu Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Infrastructure Assessment. State of Hawaii Office of Planning. 2017-2018

Assessing the Vulnerability of Coastal Wastewater Infrastructure to Climate Change. University of Hawaii Sea Grant. 2016-2018.