Event date:
Aug 11 2021 6:00 pm

Sociohydrology: “Imagineering” Not Just Engineering Needed to Solve Water Security Challenges

Speaker(s)
Dr. Murugesu Sivapalan
Venue
Zoom/Online
Abstract
Many parts of the world are facing severe water crises. Historically engineers and domain experts are tasked with design and implementation of technological solutions to water problems, such as the building of dams, pipelines and desalination plants. These work well in the short term, but non-involvement of the beneficiaries of the water works, the people themselves, in conceptualization and execution of otherwise well-intentioned and well-designed solutions often leads to unintended, even adverse, consequences due to issues not considered in designs and due to non-acceptance by society. I will illustrate this through examples of water management problems in Sri Lanka, Australia, USA, China, Europe, which prompted the launch and growth of the field of sociohydrology. I will put these in the context of UN Sustainable Development Goals related to water, which provide renewed motivation for engineers, social scientists and humanists to come together and work towards developing imaginative solutions for many water security challenges faced by communities around the world. 

Centre for Water Informatics & Technology at LUMS is pleased to announce the next talk of the "Best of Water Systems Research" seminar series. The talk will be delivered by Dr. Murugesu Sivapalan of UIUC and is titled "Sociohydrology: “Imagineering” Not Just Engineering Needed to Solve Water Security Challenges". The session will take place at 6:00-7:00 pm PKT on Wednesday, August 11, 2021. 

For individuals who have not yet registered for the seminar series, the registration link along with other details can be found at: https://wit.lums.edu.pk/BWSR2021.  

 

About the speaker: Murugesu Sivapalan holds a B.S. Civil Engineering (University of Ceylon), M.Eng  in Water Resources Engineering (AIT, Thailand), and obtained his 1986 Ph.D from Princeton University. He was Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Western Australia for 17 years, before joining University of Illinois in 2005. Siva has published on a wide range of topics, including effects of heterogeneity and scale, flood frequency, ecohydrology and water balance and water quality modeling. He was Executive Editor of the ‘Hydrology and Earth System Sciences’ journal, and was founding chair of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences: Decade on Predictions in Ungauged Basins initiative. He is also co-founder of the new subfield of sociohydrology. Sivapalan has received several awards for his research contributions, including the ‘John Dalton and Alfred Wegener Medals of the European Geosciences Union’ and the ‘Robert Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union’. He was joint recipient of the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (Creativity Prize) awarded in recognition of his role in developing and leading the new field of sociohydrology.  

 

About the seminar series: The “Best of Water Systems Research” is a webinar series initiated by The Center for Water Informatics & Technology at LUMS. While our companion webcast series “Aab Beeti” is geared towards generating public awareness and meeting leading practitioners and opinion makers in Pakistan’s water sector, this new series (BWSR) is primarily meant for discussing serious scholarship on water resources. The series celebrates distinguished works in water systems research and is aimed towards researchers, practitioners, and technical experts in water-related areas. The list of speakers majorly consists of individuals who regularly deploy quantitative data-driven methods & systems thinking and have earned recognition via peer-reviewed research in top journals. Also, many of the speakers may or may not have a direct interest in the Indus or South Asia’s other basins. The talks are (mostly) delivered bi-weekly on Wednesday evenings.

A tentative schedule for the webinars can be found at https://wit.lums.edu.pk/BWSR2021 which also includes recordings of past sessions and information on future speakers. A link for attending will be sent via email to registered individuals. Colleagues who register once can attend all future talks without the need to register again.