Managing Water Resources under Uncertainty

Water resources systems abound with uncertainties that challenge our ability to productively develop and efficiently manage them. Ever-evolving risks induced by climate change, population growth, and complex feedbacks between the natural and built environments require methodological advances in system-based approaches for identifying vulnerable system states and informing adaptive management strategies to avoid them. Our group’s research centers on addressing these two needs by developing and applying simulation and multi-objective optimization methods to better characterize and manage risks to coupled human-natural systems. Our mission is to highlight the importance of considering uncertainty and variability in environmental planning, and to contribute new and improved computational methods for managing socio-environmental systems in the face of these challenges.