The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to investigate stochastic optimization models and methodologies that will assist in managing and adapting water resources and infrastructures in an effort to ensure a sustainable future. The project will focus on two problems. The first is a large-scale multi-period water allocation problem under uncertainty (Lower Colorado River Basin) and the second is a regional-scale water reuse infrastructure design and operation problem. The proposed research will address these water resources management problems in a comprehensive manner by: (1) formulating mathematical optimization models under known and ambiguous uncertainties; (2) investigating decomposition-based solution methods that exploit the special structures of these models; and (3) advancing theory and methodology to evaluate the resulting solutions and other multi-period adaptation and mitigation policies.
The project will have a significant impact on the well-being of the 25-30 million people who reside in the southwestern United States. The models and methods developed can be applied wherever water is scarce. The project also addresses two of the grand challenges identified by the National Academy of Engineering: to help restore and improve urban infrastructure and to provide access to clean water. While the project focuses on water resources management, if successful, it will result in modeling, algorithmic and computational advances in stochastic optimization. These advances may help solve other important optimization problems. The curricular materials and tutorials developed will serve to educate the next generation of engineers on the methods and real-world applications of stochastic optimization. The project will also promote and increase the visibility of women students through a "Women in Industrial and Systems Engineering Research (WISER)" program.
