Associate Professor Dr Sharareh Pourebrahim

Associate Professor Dr Sharareh Pourebrahim

  • Associate Professor
  • Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development
SDGs Focus
No Poverty
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Life On Land

Biography

Dr. Sharareh Pourebrahim is an Associate Professor at the Jeffrey Sachs Centre on Sustainable Development, Sunway University, Malaysia, and an Associate Professor at the University of Tehran, Iran.

She has more than two decades of academic, research and leadership experience in sustainability science, environmental planning, climate change, spatial analysis and environmental modelling. Her current research is positioned around AI-enabled nature-based decarbonization and environmental intelligence, integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning, remote sensing, GIS, ecosystem-services assessment, ecological indicators, carbon accounting and life-cycle assessment to support low-carbon, nature-positive and climate-resilient development.

Her research focuses on the interaction between land-use systems, ecosystem services, climate change and carbon dynamics, with particular emphasis on sustainable land-use planning, nature-based solutions, carbon sequestration, ecological footprint and carrying-capacity assessment, environmental impact assessment and integrated water–energy–food–ecosystem systems.

A distinctive feature of her work is the integration of advanced computational and geospatial technologies into sustainability research. She applies machine learning, deep learning, spatial modelling and remote-sensing approaches to environmental applications including land-use change prediction, ecological-condition monitoring, solar-radiation forecasting, climate-risk assessment, biodiversity analysis and flood-risk forecasting.

Her work also addresses decarbonization and environmental performance assessment, including carbon and ecosystem accounting, Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 greenhouse-gas assessment, sustainability reporting, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), SimaPro-based environmental assessment and nature-based carbon-removal strategies.

Dr. Pourebrahim has extensive experience in research leadership, postgraduate supervision and international collaboration. She has supervised numerous master's and doctoral researchers and has led or participated in national and international projects covering sustainable land management, climate resilience, ecosystem services, low-emission development, environmental carrying capacity and AI-enabled sustainability assessment.

Her current research seeks to develop integrated AI and geospatial decision-support systems for decarbonization, ecosystem management and sustainable land-use planning, particularly in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

Academic & Professional Qualifications

  • Phd, University Putra Malaysia (UPM)
  • Masters, University of Tehran

Research Interests

  • Ecosystem Services Accounting
  • Spatial Land-Use Planning
  • Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem Nexus
  • Life cycle assessment and environmental impacts
  • Sustainable Forest Management
  • AI for Sustainable Agriculture
  • AI and Machine Learning for Environmental and Climate Applications
  • Nature-Based Decarbonization and Nature-Based Solutions
  • Carbon Accounting and Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG Assessment
  • GIS, Remote Sensing and Geospatial Intelligence

Teaching Areas

  • Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development

Courses Taught

  • Sustainable Management and Operation

Notable Publications

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

  1. Esam, Y., Pourebrahim, S., Hadipour, M., El-Shafie, A., Abdul Malek, M., Fardous Sham, F. A., & Ahmed, A. N. (2026). Gradient boosting–based flood risk forecasting using limited daily rainfall observations. Expert Systems with Applications, 134041.
  2. Karimadini, K., & Pourebrahim, S. (2026). Simulation of long-term spatio-temporal environmental dynamics using a unified benchmark of neighbor augmenting, LSTM and graph attention models. Scientific Reports, 16, 26841.
  3. Pourebrahim, S., Bostani, A. M., Hadipour, M., Nair, M. S., Ahmed, P. K., & Vaithilingam, S. (2026). Assessing long-term urban ecological quality using the remote sensing ecological index: A case study of the Klang River Basin, Malaysia. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 30, 101217.
  4. Rezaie, H., Pourebrahim, S., & Karimadini, M. (2026). A robust approach for predicting land use/cover changes through integrated LSTM neural networks and cellular automata. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 28, 4253–4274.
  5. Salajegheh, S., Jafari, H. R., & Pourebrahim, S. (2026). Bridging ecology and governance: An integrated framework for assessing industrial development resilience in water-scarce regions. International Journal of Environmental Research, 20, 78.
  6. Bostani, A. M., & Pourebrahim, S. (2025). Integrated fire risk assessment using time-series satellite data and multi-criteria decision-making techniques. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 100916.
  7. Soltani-Gerdefaramarzi, S., Pourebrahim, S., & Ehteram, M. (2025). Improved Shark Optimization Algorithm–Composite Radial Basis Function Neural Network for forecasting monthly solar radiation. Results in Engineering, 106339.
  8. Pourebrahim, S., Seifi, A., Ehteram, M., Hadipour, M., & Chen, J. E. (2025). The CEEMDAN–EWT–CNN–GRU–SVM model: A robust framework for decomposing non-stationary time series, extracting data features, and predicting solar radiation. Results in Engineering, 25, 104267.
  9. Pourebrahim, S., Ehteram, M., Hadipour, M., Kisi, O., El-Shafie, A., Ahmed, A. N., & Chen, J. E. (2024). Advancements in evaporation prediction: Introducing the gated recurrent unit–multi-kernel extreme learning machine (MKELM)–Gaussian process regression (GPR) model. Environmental Sciences Europe, 36(1), 202.
  10. Seifi, A., Pourebrahim, S., Ehteram, M., & Shabanian, H. (2024). A robust multi-model framework for groundwater level prediction: The BFSA–MVMD–GRU–RVM model. Results in Engineering, 24, 103250.
  11. Fayyaz, S., Moeinaddini, M., Pourebrahim, S., Khoshnevisan, B., Kazemi, A., Toufighi, S. P., et al. (2024). Assessing environmental enhancement scenarios in a petrochemical port: A comprehensive comparison using a hybrid LCA–GRM model. Journal of Cleaner Production, 445, 141079.
  12. Hadipour, M., Pourebrahim, S., Heidari, H., Nikooy, F., Ahmed, A. N., & Chen, J. E. (2024). Evaluation of water resource balance in the Urmia Lake Basin: Integrating carrying capacity and water footprint model for sustainable management. Ecological Indicators, 166, 112464.

Achievements & Accolades

UNESCO Keizo Obuchi Research Fellowship, 2009