Jonathan Cohen is an associate engineer at RAND who specializes in climate adaptation, water resources management, critical infrastructure, and operations research. He has a broad range of experience in environmental and civil engineering topics including hydrology, ecosystem restoration, infrastructure economics, optimization, and simulation modeling.
At RAND, Cohen's work has covered a wide range of topics, including climate security and resilience, disaster recovery and preparedness, building codes, personnel and resource management, water supply risks, and land management. He previously worked as a hydrologic engineer for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, where he specialized in reservoir operations and river restoration. His dissertation work at the University of California, Davis focused on dynamic and robust adaptation to climate change in water resources systems. He performed climate risk assessments for California’s water system and created new strategies for developing climate adaptation policies.
Cohen holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis and a B.S. in Engineering from Swarthmore College.
Education
B.S. in engineering, Swarthmore College; M.S. in civil & environmental eng, University of California-Davis; Ph.D. in civil & environmental eng, University of California-Davis
Selected Work
- Cohen, Jonathan S., and Jonathan D. Herman, "Dynamic Adaptation of Water Resources Systems Under Uncertainty by Learning Policy Structure and Indicators," Water Resources Research, 57(11), 2021
- Cohen, Jonathan S., Harrison B. Zeff, and Jonathan D. Herman, "How do the properties of training scenarios influence the robustness of reservoir operating policies to climate uncertainty?" Environmental Modelling & Software, 141, 2021
- Cohen, Jonathan S., Harrison B. Zeff, and Jonathan D. Herman, "Adaptation of Multiobjective Reservoir Operations to Snowpack Decline in the Western United States," Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 146(12), 2020