Resilience-Oriented Watershed and Extreme Freshwater Events Management, Analysis, and Multi-Criteria Modelling

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Freshwater is essential for resilient economic development, human and ecosystem health, and community sustainability across Canada, and particularly in rural areas of the Prairie provinces where water scarcity and limited access to surface water options are reality. Economic sectors including resource extraction and refinement, and agricultural production are vulnerable to extreme freshwater events (EFWE), such as floods and droughts. Creating enhanced methods to plan for and predict EFWE in light of uncertainty, intra-annual climate variation, and global change events is essential for resiliency-oriented watershed management. This program of research aligns with my team's research achievements and USask signature strengths focusing on optimized engineering solutions for watershed management (quality and quantity), particularly in rural and agricultural areas. My team has expertise in watershed scale hydrology and source water protection, development of appropriate technology solutions to address industrial and agricultural water quality impacts, and collection and implementation of community responses to EFWE to develop better engineered solutions and infrastructure. The overarching goal of this research is to contribute to the scientific and engineering understanding and development of high impact practices for building resilience into watershed management. By doing so, we can reduce vulnerability to EFWE and enhance evidence-based policies, regulatory change and engineering standards. The long-term objective of this program of research is to develop reliable and robust decision analysis tools and support for evidence-based policy for EFWEs at the watershed scale. The program of research includes several achievable short-term objectives for the next five years (2020-2025): 1. Incorporating EFWE projections into high priority watershed management challenges for Prairies industries and communities 2. Identifying and providing insights for enhanced resiliency of at-risk and vulnerable infrastructure, industries, and communities at the watershed scale 3. Evaluating, optimizing, and field-testing modular and decentralized water treatment options that reflect changing watershed management needs and EFWE impacts in rural and agricultural areas; 4. Incorporating cumulative needs and impacts assessments methods to strategic watershed management and analysis relating to EFWE effects on resiliency of rural and agricultural areas on the Prairies. The program of research is supported by both exceptional research facilities and HQP, and is situated within the context of an extremely high functioning collaborative research environment created by the Global Institute of Water Security (CFREF and CERC enabled) and Global Water Futures teams at USask. Through this innovative and high impact research, at-risk infrastructure, industries and communities will have new predictive tools and novel engineering solutions to address EFWE and watershed management.