Transboundary Basins: Engineering Optimized Benefits for People & Nature

Credit: Lorem Ipsum

Engineering optimized benefits for people & nature

The problem we address

Downstream users in river basins all over the world are getting fewer services out of their water than they could—less hydropower, fewer fish, less biodiversity, and less control over their destinies. The problem isn’t always just politics—it’s technical capacity and data savviness. Basin transboundary commissions in almost all developing world tropical river basins need to level up those capacities to design basin operations that maximize services to people while minimizing the costs to biodiversity and nature.

Our Services/Solutions

Future H2O guides transboundary basin commissions to make smart development and management tradeoffs that produce optimized outcomes for all basin stakeholders. We use AI, deep learning and tailored science to create regimes that allow these commissions to confidently manage their basins to achieve those outcomes.

Future H2O Lead: Yushio Tsai, PhD

Yushiou Tsai is a socio-hydrologist working at human decision-making in the use of natural resources and its consequences. Her ongoing projects include:

Lower Mekong Basin—exploring transboundary water conflicts among the four riparian countries to identify opportunities and barriers for improving transboundary water sharing arrangement and facilitating trade-offs between water, energy and food.

Brazos River Basin, Texas—assessing value of wetland restoration across a diverse set of stakeholders and evaluating flood risks given a portfolio of wetland restoration options.

Prior to her current position at Arizona State University, Tsai worked with a social, policy and integrated assessment modeling team in the University of Vermont to apply bottom-up modeling approaches to better understand the interconnections between human decisions, land use and water use. She also spearheaded a farmer survey and participated in stakeholder engagement activities to better understand a) the impacts of water quality information on farmers’ sustainable behaviors, b) farmers’ decision-making processes on adopting best management practices.

Tsai received a PhD from Tufts University with a focus on water systems and statistical hydrology.

CONTACT US

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