PhD work

My PhD research focuses on climate adaptation and decision making under deep uncertainty in water resources systems, with a particular focus on how reservoir operations and infrastructure decisions shape trade-offs across water, energy, and flood management. Using the Idukki reservoir system in Kerala, India, I examine how these trade-offs change under uncertain hydrologic, climatic, and socioeconomic conditions. The work combines reservoir modeling, large ensembles of synthetic inflows, and multi-objective optimization to evaluate hydropower generation, irrigation water supply, and downstream flood protection. Future changes in irrigation demand, population, and energy requirements are incorporated to identify performance thresholds at which existing operating strategies no longer meet system objectives. These thresholds provide the basis for exploring when adaptation may be needed and how different interventions can change system performance.

Building on this analysis, I developed a computational framework for adaptive pathway planning that systematically generates and evaluates alternative combinations and sequences of adaptation actions. The framework considers interventions including hydropower expansion, storage augmentation, downstream flood protection, and distributed solar generation, and evaluates their costs and benefits across uncertain future conditions. Performance-based tipping points and just-in-time implementation triggers are used to determine when a pathway should transition to a new action, while multi-objective analysis is used to examine trade-offs among adaptation cost, energy benefits, and flood protection. I am also extending this work through a counterfactual analysis of the Idukki system, asking what might have happened if adaptive, multi-objective planning had been implemented earlier. This work considers Minimum Environmental Flow requirements and explores alternative operational pathways for improving riverine conditions while maintaining low flood risk and minimizing hydropower losses.