Climate Resilient and Equitable Urban Water

Urban water resources infrastructure are operationally centralized and highly capitalized engineered systems designed to operate for multiple decades with the goals of diverting, storing, and transporting surface or groundwater sources over regional scales. This infrastructure typically extends over geographic extents well outside the urban service area with potential impacts and conflict with both upstream and downstream communities, and over distances spanning different hydroclimates. In addition to equity issues stemming from the control and management of water between jurisdictions, exposure to flood and quality hazards, and reliability of supply can vary substantially within urban communities. Hydroclimate change is a major challenge for the design and maintenance challenges for these complex systems, that can differentially impact communities within the water resources region. There is strong interest, and current activity in increasing the resilience of water resource systems by adapting coupled green and gray infrastructure and technologies to protect source waters, treat and recycle wastewater and stormwater in both developed and developing urban systems. The fellow would work with an interdisciplinary team to assess current status and future potential to use principles drawn from natural ecosystems in tandem with engineering design for climate resilient and equitable water systems to provide reliable, productive water systems serving communities across urban regions and contributing watersheds. Experience utilizing down-scaled, bias corrected climate change ensemble forecasts adapted to analysis and modeling of regional water supply, urban stormwater, and watershed ecohydrology is preferred.