Speaker: Marta Zaniolo, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University
Droughts strain municipal water resources and expose cities to risks of either overbuilding costly water infrastructure or underbuilding and incurring supply failures. One emerging strategy is to expand water supply capacity dynamically, responding as needed to hydrological and demand change. We introduce DRIPP, a framework for dynamic water supply planning that integrates climate, watershed, and technology models. Our results for Santa Barbara, CA, reveal the importance of drought characteristics to determine optimal water planning decisions, and high-impact levers of innovation in technology and policy that reduce planning costs. New research directions include scaling DRIPP to utilities across California and the analysis of utility water rates.