A research group of the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, UMass Amherst
Ten members of the Hydrosystems Research Group attended the 2017 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting held December 11-15 in New Orleans.
Hydrosystems Research Group members at AGU 2017 (from L to R: Hassaan Khan, Baptiste Francois, M. Umit Taner, David Rheinheimer, Katherine Schlef, Mariam Allam, Sungwook Wi, Sarah Freeman, Faranak Bedhazi (U. of Cincinnati), Chinedum Eluwa, and Casey Brown).
Alec Bernstein attended a workshop convened by the International Hydropower Conference, the World Bank, and the Nordic Development Bank on Hydrologic Risk in Hydropower Dominated Energy Systems in London, UK on November 30th through December 1st. The workshop’s geographic focus was Africa and the main objectives of this training were: (i) to present and discuss the best practices and the new trends internationally adopted in the management of the hydrologic risk in hydropower generation and (ii) inform the representatives from the African countries, potentially exposed, about the suitable mitigation measures and the available hedging mechanisms. Continue reading
Dr. Casey Brown and Dr. Patrick Ray conducted a World Bank training workshop on the Decision Tree Framework: A Climate Risk Assessment for Water Infrastructure at the Hydropower and Dams 2017: Africa conference in Marrakech, Morocco. The training took place on March 12th and 13th, 2017 at the La Palmeraie Conference Centre in Marrakech, and the conference was March 14th-16th.
Dr. Brown presenting the Decision Tree Framework
The training was well attended by approximately 30 participants from universities, government agencies, consulting firms, and water & energy ministries from all across Africa. This training was meant to be an introduction to the Decision Tree Framework, and many participants were enthusiastic to learn more about the framework and apply it on their own systems.
Dr. Patrick Ray presenting case studies using the Decision Tree Framework
A young engineer from the water ministry in Morocco responded that if the training had not been provided, his ministry would never have thought about screening projects for climate risk. Hydrosystems group member Alec Bernstein attended the workshop and conference as a participant and engaged with many of the attendees of the training session; the young engineer’s response was typical for many participants of the sessions.
The crowd of enthusiastic participants during the Decision Tree Training workshop.
The Hydrosystems Research Group will be hosting a week long World Bank Decision Tree Training April 25th through 28th in Amherst, Massachusetts. Anyone interested in attending should contact alec.bernstein@umass.edu for information and the application for the event.
Several members of the Hydrosystems Research Group attended the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 2016 Fall Meeting. Held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, this conference attracts over 24,000 attendees from around the world, and connects researchers studying subjects as diverse as Mars’ upper atmosphere to those in water resources engineering.
Dr. Casey Brown spoke at a special session on Water and Society: Water Resources Management and Policy in a Changing World with a vision for the science of sustainable water management. He argued for a new focus in water management that “bridge[s] disciplinary barriers between … infrastructure planning and management … the role of human actors and … physical processes in the absence of … human[s]”.
Dr. Sungwook Wi presented a poster on A user-friendly software package to ease the use of VIC hydrologic model for practitioners. Hassaan Khan and Katherine Schlef gave talks on Quantifying Third-Party Impacts and Environmental Externalities from a Cap-And-Trade System for Groundwater Management and on Modeling non-stationary flood magnitude and frequency in West Africa using a hierarchical Bayesian framework conditioned on large-scale atmospheric processes, respectively.
The posters of the AGU Fall 2016 Meeting
The conference was a success with many opportunities to reconnect with and form new colleagues, as well as experience the rain, fog, and relative warmth of San Francisco. The Hydrosystems Research Group looks forward to seeing you at AGU’s 2017 Fall Meeting in New Orleans!