Adjunct Professor
Professor Benjamin Preston is the Director of the Infrastructure Resilience and Environmental Policy Program at RAND Corporation. Prior to this, Benjamin spent seven years as the Deputy Director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Benjamin has also worked as a Research Scientist in the Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, CSIRO, and as a Senior Research Fellow in the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Qualifications
Doctor of Philosophy (Environmental Science), Georgia Institute of Technology; Bachelor of Science (General Biology), College of William and Mary.
Research areas
- Biology
- Life sciences
- Community resilience
- Energy
- Environmental and natural resource management
- Climate change
- Natural hazards
- Alternative and renewable energies
Memberships
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
- American Geophysical Union
Awards
- Leshner Leadership Institute Fellowship, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016)
- Award for Science Communication, UT/Battelle (2015)
- Charles S. Falkenberg Award, American Geophysical Union (2015)
- Highly Commended Award for the project “Prioritizing Coastal Adaptation and Development Options for Local Government”, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (Australia) (2014)
- Significant Event Award – Contributions to the IPCC AR5 and U.S. National Assessment, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2014)
Key Research Publications
Ernst, K & Preston, B 2017, ‘Adaptation opportunities and constraints in coupled systems: evidence from the U.S. energy-water nexus’, Environmental Science & Policy, vol. 70, pp. 38-45.
Rastogi, D, Kao, S, Ashfaq, M, Mei, R, Kabela, E, Gangrade, S, Naz, B, Preston, B, Singh, N & Ananthara, V 2017, ‘Effects of climate change on probable maximum precipitation: a sensitivity study over the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa river basin’, Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmosphere, vol. 122(9), pp. 4808-4828.
Elrick-Barr, C, Thomsen, D, Preston, B, & Smith, T 2017, ‘Perceptions matter: household adaptive capacity and capability in two Australian coastal communities’, Regional Environmental Change, vol. 17(4), pp. 1141-1151.
Elrick-Barr, C, Smith, T, Preston, B, Thomsen, D & Baum, S 2016, ‘How are coastal households responding to climate change?’, Environmental Science & Policy, vol. 63, pp. 177-186.
Surendran Nair, S, Preston, B, King, A, Mei, R & Post, W & 2016, ‘Using landscape typologies to model socioecological systems: Application to agriculture of the United States Gulf Coast’, Environmental Modeling & Software, vol. 79, pp. 85-95.
Preston, B, King, A, Absar, S, Ernst, K, Nair, S & Parish, E 2015, ‘Scale and the representation of human agency in the modeling of agroecosystems’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, vol. 14, pp. 239-249.
Melo Zurita, M, Smith, T, Thomsen, D, Lyth, A, Preston, B & Baum, S 2015, ‘Reframing Water: contesting H2O within the European Union’, Geoforum, vol. 65, pp. 170-178.
Preston, B, Rickards, L, Fuenfgeld, H & Keenan, R 2015, ‘Toward reflexive climate adaptation research’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, vol. 1, pp. 127-135.
Absar, S & Preston, B 2015, ‘Extending the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for use in regional impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability studies’, Global Environmental Change, vol. 33, pp. 83-96.
Contact Professor Benjamin Preston via email bpreston@rand.org.