{"id":2318,"date":"2026-02-17T08:08:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T08:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/petermbach.com\/?page_id=2318"},"modified":"2026-04-06T20:57:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T20:57:41","slug":"060-maryam-imani","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/petermbach.com\/index.php\/podcast\/060-maryam-imani\/","title":{"rendered":"TGC Podcast Episode 060 – Maryam Imani"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Grand Challengers Podcast Episode #60<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Embracing failure to build resilience – critical infrastructure, nature and the human spirit<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Guest: Maryam Imani<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

April 7th, 2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Why do some cities descend into chaos during storms while others bounce back within hours? The answer often lies not in any single system, but in the invisible connections between them, and whether the people responsible for water, energy and transport are actually working together when things go wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Maryam Imani, Associate Professor of Water Systems Engineering at Anglia Ruskin University, has spent her career investigating exactly these questions. As a Co-Investigator on the NERC-funded RV-DSS project, Maryam helped develop a resilience and vulnerability-informed decision support framework that models how failures propagate across interdependent water, energy and transport networks. Using a case study from North Argyll, Scotland, her research demonstrated a striking finding: while greater infrastructure interdependency increases vulnerability to cascading failures, it simultaneously creates opportunities for “shared interventions”. These entail collaborative recovery strategies that can dramatically improve system resilience. Her work shows that when one asset fails, the impact can cascade through interconnected systems, knocking out services, blocking emergency access and extending recovery times. But with coordinated planning between operators, these same connections become pathways for faster, more effective responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversation then expands into the world of nature-based solutions (NBS) and sustainable drainage systems (SuDS). Through her role as Principal Investigator of the UKRI-funded RESoURce@Brandia project, Maryam has worked with communities in S\u00e3o Carlos, Brazil and Chennai, India, to implement resilience-informed SuDS that address flooding, water quality and quality of life. She draws powerful comparisons between the UK, Brazil and India, revealing how informal settlements in the Global South often demonstrate greater adaptive capacity and willingness to embrace flexible solutions, while the Global North grapples with heritage constraints, adoption challenges and institutional barriers. As SuDS become recognised as critical infrastructure, Maryam raises an important concern: do we truly understand their long-term performance? Her pioneering SuDS Health Monitoring research at ARU combines experimental lab models with AI-driven analysis to develop predictive maintenance tools, work she describes as essential to ensuring nature-based solutions do not simply shift today’s problems into tomorrow’s legacy failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maryam connects professional and personal resilience. A former competitive taekwondo athlete who earned a black belt and represented the national team in Iran, Maryam’s journey through structural engineering, a startup that ended in perceived failure, and the tragic loss of her brother in a motorcycle accident has given her a deeply personal understanding of the resilience she studies. Her decision to eventually sit on a motorcycle again, facing her deepest fear, became a turning point. As she puts it: “sometimes you need to run towards your fears in order to discover change.” The episode closes with Maryam reciting Sadi Shirazi’s 13th-century poem “Bani Adam” (Children of Adam), inscribed at the United Nations, drawing a powerful parallel between human interconnectedness and the interdependent infrastructure systems that sustain our cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Episode Teaser<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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