Ph.D. in water resources engineering, UCLA; M.S. in water resources engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; B.A. in humanities, University of Texas at Austin
Michelle R. Miro is an information scientist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. With a broad portfolio of work across climate resilience and adaptation and disaster recovery for critical infrastructure, with a focus on the water sector, Miro has methodological expertise in water resources modeling, climate data analysis, remote sensing, geospatial analysis, machine learning and decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU).
Her research supports international, federal, and local emergency, infrastructure, and resource management agencies with climate adaptation, disaster resilience and recovery, and water resources planning. Her projects include climate risk analyses of national critical infrastructure, climate vulnerability analyses of water supply and demand plans in Southern California and South America, groundwater management in urban and agricultural regions, transboundary water management under a changing climate in the Great Lakes, and extreme precipitation impacts and planning under a changing climate.
She also serves as a co-investigator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Mid-Atlantic Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (MARISA) program, and as a co-investigator on a National Academy of Sciences coastal resilience grant focused on future flood risk for communities in the Gulf of Mexico. Miro co-led the development of Puerto Rico’s water sector recovery plan following Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
She holds an MS in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Miro, Michelle E., Andrew Lauland, Rahim Ali, Edward W. Chan, Richard H. Donohue, Liisa Ecola, Timothy R. Gulden, Liam Regan, Karen M. Sudkamp, Tobias Sytsma, Michael T. Wilson, and Chandler Sachs, Assessing Risk to the National Critical Functions as a Result of Climate Change, RAND Corporation (RR-A1645-7), 2022
Miro, Michelle E., Arthur T. DeGaetano, Tania López-Cantú, Constantine Samaras, Marissa Webber, and Krista Romita Grocholski, Developing Future Projected Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Curves: A Technical Report on Data, Methods, and IDF Curves for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and Virginia, RAND Corporation (TL-A1365-1), 2021
Miro, M., Groves, D., Tincher, B., Syme, J., Tanverakul, S., Catt, D., "Adaptive water management in the face of uncertainty: Integrating machine learning, groundwater modeling and robust decision making," Climate Risk Management, 2021
Miro, Michelle E., Krista Romita Grocholski, Debra Knopman, Jordan R. Fischbach, Sara Schwetschenau, Kyle D. Haak, and Matthew Kubasak, Chesapeake Bay Model Inventory and Selection Tool (MIST), RAND Corporation (TL-A386-12), 2023
Preston, Benjamin Lee, Michelle E. Miro, Paul Brenner, Christopher K. Gilmore, John F. Raffensperger, Jaime Madrigano, Alexandra Huttinger, Michael Blackhurst, and David Catt, Beyond Recovery: Transforming Puerto Rico's Water Sector in the Wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, RAND Corporation (RR-2608-DHS), 2020
Miro, M., Marlier, M. and R. Girven, Transboundary Environmental Stressors on India-Pakistan Relations, RAND Corporation (RR-2715), 2019
Miro, M., Best, K., Kaynar, N., Kirpes, R. and A. Najera Chesler, "Approaches to analyzing the vulnerability of community water systems to groundwater contamination in Los Angeles County," Research in Mathematics and Public Policy, 2020
Groves, D., Miro, M., Syme, J., Becerra-Ornelas, A., Molina-Pérez, E., Saavedra, V, Vogt-Schilb, A., Planificación de infraestructura hídrica para el futuro incierto en América Latina: un enfoque eficiente en costos y tiempo para tomar decisiones robustas de infraestructura, con un estudio de caso en Mendoza, Argentina, Inter-American Development Bank, 2021
