As part of the Water Institute's WaterTalks lecture series, Lovell Endowed Professor Ximing Cai from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will be presenting, "Modelling River Basins as Coupled Human and Natural Systems."
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With growing human interferences in hydrological processes over space and time, water resources systems, from a simple reservoir to a complex river basin, have evolved to become distinctive Coupled human-natural systems (CHNS). Modeling river basins as CHNS needs to depict reciprocal interactions and feedbacks and co-evolution of biophysical and socioeconomic states.
This presentation will discuss research challenges and opportunities in modelling river basins as CHNS with greater attention to ecological resilience and sustainability principles. Studies on distributed, bottom-up approaches will be introduced. In these studies, a basin is characterized as a multiple-agent system (MAS), a self-organizing system characterized by disaggregated but interactive decision processes at the agent level and coordinating mechanisms inducing consequences at the basin level. Future research potentials will be discussed with respect to 1) an integrated scientific framework that can address basin management problems in the context of heavy human interferences; 2) opportunities with Big Data and cyberinfrastructure for CNHS modelling and information dissemination.
Speaker Bio
Professor Ximing Cai is a research leader in integrated hydrologic-economic modelling for river basin management and water systems operations. His current research areas include coupled human-natural system analysis with an emphasis of human interferences in hydrological processes, water-energy-food system modelling especially in dry areas, and sustainable water resources management particularly in developing countries. He has authored or co-authored over 150 peer-reviewed journal papers, three books and several monographs. He used to serve as Editor for Water Resources Research (Am. Geophysical Union, AGU). He has obtained several awards including U.S. National Science Foundation Career Award and Best Paper Awards with Water International and J. of Water Resources Planning and Management. He has worked as consultant to the World Bank, United Nations and other international agencies. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in civil engineering systems and engineering economics, environmental and water resources systems analysis, water resources engineering, surface water hydrology, and river basin management.