Slobodan P. Simonovic

Slobodan P. Simonović (born 26 April 1949) is a Serbian-Canadian civil engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Western Ontario. His research applies systems analysis to water resources management, focusing on flood risk and adapting water infrastructure to climate change.

Education and career Simonović was born in Belgrade on 26 April 1949. He received a BSc in civil engineering (1974) and an MSc in water resources systems (1977) from the University of Belgrade, and a PhD in water resources systems engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1981.

He joined the Department of Civil and Geological Engineering at the University of Manitoba as an associate professor in 1986, was promoted to full professor in 1992, and directed the university's Natural Resources Institute from 1996 to 2000.

Research Simonović's work uses simulation, optimization, and multi-criteria analysis to study the planning and operation of complex water systems, including reservoir operations, flood forecasting, and the resilience of urban infrastructure.

His research group has released publicly accessible software tools for water resources practice, including the IDF_CC tool for updating local extreme-rainfall statistics under climate change; ResilSIM, a web-based decision-support tool that estimates the resilience of urban infrastructure to flooding; and a tool for evaluating impacts of global change based on the ANEMI integrated model. In 2021, the group released a publicly accessible web tool mapping projected changes in floodplains across Canada under climate change scenarios, described as the first flood-impact map of its kind to cover the entire country. He has frequently commented on urban flooding, climate change, and infrastructure adaptation in Canadian print and broadcast media.

Simonović and his research group publish the Water Resources Research Reports series, distributed through the Western University library.

Recognition Simonović received the American Society of Civil Engineers Ven Te Chow Award in 2013 for lifetime achievement in hydrologic engineering. His other awards include the International Award of the Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources (2001) and an award for outstanding contribution from the European Water Resources Association (2017).

Selected books Managing Water Resources: Methods and Tools for a Systems Approach. UNESCO/Earthscan, 2009. (translated into Farsi) Systems Approach to Management of Disasters: Methods and Applications. Wiley, 2011. (translated into Chinese) Floods in a Changing Climate: Risk Management. Cambridge University Press, 2012. (translated into Chinese)