Research Profile
We focus on the resilience of human-social systems to climate change impacts and are particularly interested in how societies build and sustain resilience against environmental and climate threats.
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Research Profile
Prof. Yang’s research explores the resilience of human-social systems to climate change impacts. He is particularly interested in how societies build and sustain resilience against environmental and climate threats.Another interest is in the assessment and modeling of resilience achievement, progress and potentials.
His work emphasizes successful cases, demonstrates significant progress, and showcases the wide array of solutions, technologies, and strategies that enables resilient development. He frames climate resilience through a hopeful lens that underscores human potential, adaptability, and innovation, and fosters a narrative of optimism of human-climate relations against the backdrop of risk and crisis discourses. Besides the specific and technical work, Prof. Yang attempts to understand the fundamental, conceptual and theoretical issues of “resilience systems”.
Prof. Yang employs a diverse set of methodologies, including household surveys, expert interviews, stakeholder network analysis, agent-based modeling, geo-information system and data-driven machine learning. His research spans multiple global regions, including China, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, Nepal, and Germany, with a historical perspective on social resilience over the past 5,000 years.
Research Projects
An overview of our ongoing and completed research projects can be found here.