Supriya Krishnan

Urban planner & architect, analysing physical climate risk in cities and how that impacts long-term growth and investment decisions. Doctoral research at TU Delft on planning under deep uncertainty, with knowledge support to UNDRR, the CDRI, CUDRR&R, India's NDMA, and the NIPFP.

Open to research & policy positions, 2026  ·  supriya.urban@gmail.com

The aim of my work is to help cities make long-horizon planning decisions under climate uncertainty — when the data is incomplete, the future is non-stationary, and the institutions deciding are operating on timelines fundamentally misaligned with the systems they govern. In the next twenty years, every major metropolitan region will face climate impacts — coastal inundation, pluvial and fluvial flooding, extreme heat — whose magnitudes and frequencies sit outside the historical record their planning systems were built on. As these impacts intensify, it is critical to develop methods that let planners and policymakers act on imperfect physical-risk data without waiting for certainty that may never come. My work develops decision-grade methodologies for that translation — scenario architectures that operate inside formal planning timeframes, land-use simulations under deep uncertainty, and comparative frameworks that move between data-rich and data-poor governance regimes. I apply scenario modelling, robust decision-making, stochastic land-use simulation, and design-thinking methods to develop planning tools that decision-makers can actually use. I completed my PhD at TU Delft in 2026, where I developed methodologies for adaptive urban planning across the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Before that, I helped set up the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure at UNDRR — a multilateral mechanism launched at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. I have published in npj Urban Sustainability, Cities, and Environment & Planning B. I received the Allianz Climate Risk Research Award in 2024 and was named a C40 Women4Climate Fellow in 2022.

Research themes
SystemsCities as interconnected, evolving organisms.
ForesightStrategies robust across multiple climate futures.
EquityGeospatial knowledge & the Global South.

03 ·  News

Mar 2026 PhD defended at TU Delft.
2025 Speaking on open geospatial trends at Cesium Developer Summit.
2025 Presenting at Harvard CGA — Geography of Digital Twins.
2025 At ESRI UC & USGIF GEOINT — San Diego & St Louis.