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Minimizing Costs and Risk for Rural Water Systems

Many rural and remote populations either lack access to treated water supplies or are served by water systems that are at risk from increasing contaminant concentrations, aging infrastructure, unreliable supplies, and/or groundwater depletion. Recent research has shown that these ...

Hendrickson, T., Rao, P., Stokes-Draut, J., Gonzalez, S., and Fiske, P.

Sensor Enabled Cured-in-Place (CIPP) Liners: Cutting Leaks Today, Powering Digital Twins and Real-Time Detection for Tomorrow's Resilient Intelligent Water Distribution Systems

Municipal water accounts for roughly 12% of total consumption in the United States (EPA and AWWA averages), yet an estimated 14% of this treated supply is lost through distribution line leaks (AWWA national average). Because municipal water carries significant embedded energy and ...

Robinson, G., Luo, L., Earni, S., and DeJong, M.

Revolutionizing Water-Energy Infrastructure Resilience through Distributed Sensing and Digital Twins

This white paper addresses the intersection of Water for Energy and Energy for Water, proposing foundational technology to enhance the resilience and operational longevity of critical national assets, including hydropower facilities and marine energy systems. The core challenge i...

Luo, L.

Unlocking Small-scale Hydropower using Water Infrastructure for National Energy Security

Reliable local energy generation and long-duration energy storage are critical to balancing peak demands and providing distributed emergency backup near both urban and rural populations. However, small-scale (< 10 MW) hydropower faces barriers, including siting, permitting, water ...

Stokes-Draut, J., Taylor, M., and Rao, P.

Material Science Driven Water Technology Innovation

The white paper explores multiple Energy-Water Resilience (EWR) topics, including water for energy, energy for water, and their intersections. It proposes low-cost, scalable water-based material processes to advance water technologies through materials innovation. The existing cha...

Chang, C., and Ajami, N.

Aquifer Storage as a Core Strategy for Energy-Water Resilience: Near and Long-Term Development Across U.S. Regions

This research area primarily addresses the "Energy for Water" focus area. Depleted aquifers pose serious economic liabilities if left as is, however, they are a core asset for long term water storage throughout the US. Current efforts to store surface water, while successful are s...

Ulrich, C., Nico, P., Arora, B., Zhang, Y., Singhal, A., Robinson, G., and Stokes-Draut, J.

Harnessing water system flexibility for grid resilience

With new critical infrastructure that require uninterrupted power supplies (such as data centers that support the AI boom) and a rising share of intermittent generation sources on the grid, there is a growing need for flexibility in grid resources which can ramp up or down quickly...

Szinai, J., and Callaway, D.

Building Resilient Energy-Water Systems: Integrated Modeling, Scenario Selection, and Near-Term Decision Support

U.S. energy and water systems are increasingly interdependent, often leading to cascading and compounding system failures when faced with acute and chronic hazards. Such stressors propagate across multiple spatial scales, typically starting with changing earth system dynamics (for...

Rodriguez, L., Szinai, J., Stokes-Draut, J., Dwivedi, D., Ulrich, C., Holm, J., and Vahmani, P.

Integrated Energy-Water Data for Cross-Sector Resilience

Disjointed management of water and energy systems has created systemic vulnerabilities in the United States, particularly as aging infrastructure, population and industrial growth, and severe weather events strain both sectors. High-quality, standardized datasets like those provid...

Hodson, A., Stokes-Draut, J., Chini, C., Rao, P., and Semrod, K.

Standardized Siting and Risk Analysis Decision Support Mechanisms for Water-Intensive Industries

This paper focuses on water for cooling industrial energy generation loads and energy and water for cooling large process loads. A challenge is that siting any large facility with substantial water demands without understanding baseline conditions and assessing potential multi-sec...

Fuchs, H., Karki, U., Stokes-Draut, J., Rao, P., Varadharajan, C., Hodson, A., Ajami, N., and Shehabi, A.