Kelly Klima

Kelly Klima
Senior Engineer; Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Santa Monica Office

Education

Ph.D. in engineering & public policy, Carnegie Mellon University; M.S. in earth, atmosphere, & planetary science, MIT; M.S. in aeronautics & astronautics, MIT; B.S. in mechanical engineering, Caltech

Media Resources

This researcher is available for interviews.

To arrange an interview, contact the RAND Office of Media Relations at (310) 451-6913, or email media@rand.org.

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Overview

Kelly Klima is a senior engineer at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She has over ten years of experience in decision analysis on energy and the environment. Recent energy and climate work has focused on natural gas decommissioning, resilience of California's electricity infrastructure to current and future natural hazards, energy equity now and in the future, and geographic smoothing of solar photovoltaics. Klima's research work supports community resilience for extreme heat and flooding throughout the world, and has been applied in the City of Pittsburgh, City of St. Paul, counties in New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and New York City. She also serves as an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and a summer associate mentor. Klima holds a CFM from the Association of State Floodplain Managers and a CCEA from the International Cost Estimating and Analysis Association. She earned her Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Concurrent Non-RAND Positions

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University

Selected Publications

Aviva Loew, Paulina Jaramillo, Haibo Zhai, Rahim Ali, Bart Nijssen, Yifan Cheng, and Kelly Klima, "Fossil fuel–fired power plant operations under a changing climate," Climatic Change, 163(1), 2020

Diogo Prosdocimi; Kelly Klima, "Health Effects of Heat Vulnerability in Rio de Janeiro: A Validation Model for Policy Applications," SN Applied Sciences, 2(12), 2020

Kelly Klima; Lobna El Gammal; Weilong David Kong; Diogo Prosdocimi, "Creating a Water Risk Index to Improve Community Resilience," IBM Journal of Research and Development, 64(1/2), 2019

Roger Lueken; Kelly Klima; W. Michael Griffin; Jay Apt, "The climate and health effects of a USA switch from coal to gas electricity generation," Energy, 109, 2016

DeVynne Farquharson; Paulina Jaramillo; Greg Schivley; Kelly Klima; Derrick Carlson; Constantine Samaras, "Beyond global warming potential: a comparative application of climate impact metrics for the life cycle assessment of coal and natural gas based electricity," Journal of Industrial Ecology, 21(4), 2017

Kelly Klima; Jay Apt, "Geographic smoothing of solar PV: results from Gujarat," Environmental Research Letters, 109(10), 2015

Kelly Klima; Jay Apt; Mahesh Bandi; Paul Happy; Clyde Loutan; Russell Young, "Geographic smoothing of solar photovoltaic electric power production in the Western USA," Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, 10(5), 2018

Honors & Awards

  • Certified Floodplain Manager, Association of State Floodplain Managers
  • Certified Cost Estimator/Analyst, International Cost Estimating & Analysis Association

Commentary

Publications