Maximizing the Value of Water Infrastructure Investments

Significant public spending is required to repair aging water infrastructure and prepare water systems for future changes in supply, demand, and storage driven by climate change. But recent landmark spending bills in the United States represent only a fraction of the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated $2.5 trillion infrastructure investment deficit. How do we bridge this value gap? One answer is to “build back wiser” by investing dollars in digitized, versatile, distributed, and inclusive water infrastructure systems. This seminar will discuss advances in modern modeling techniques at the unit process, facility, and systems scale to inform wise R&D and infrastructure investments. Specific examples will be provided from our work with municipal utilities across California, highlighting the role for implementation research to inform fundamental discovery needs in environmental science and engineering.

Speaker: meagan Mauter, Stanford University