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ABSTRACT INFORMATION
'Experiences Working with Stakeholders and Surprises of the Way to Achieving Water Security' Abstract: As important as understanding the physical, biological and geomorphological processes affecting runoff, so are the economic, social and political aspects and impacts affecting how we manage this runoff. The planning, design and operation of infrastructure aimed at managing runoff typically involves people. We engineers and scientists are taught that our purpose in life is to meet the needs of society, and that is people. For us in this conference this translates to how best can we satisfy the needs of all those impacted by what we as a profession do to insure adequate and reliable quantities and qualities of this runoff at affordable costs. This proves difficult when people can’t agree on what it is they want, and when, and how. This talk will identify, discuss, and compare some major on-going case studies that suggest that the more we work to address the social impacts of what we do, the more it costs, the longer it takes, and that whatever decisions are made, they will surely be addressed again, and again, on into the future. If this is true, how do we best practice what we are taught, or what some of us teach, today?
SPEAKER INFORMATION
PRESENTER(S): Daniel Peter Loucks - Bio: Professor Loucks serves on the faculties of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Institute of Public Affairs at Cornell University. His teaching and research interests include the development and application of systems analysis methods that integrate economics, ecology, environmental engineering and public policy for addressing environmental and water resources management issues. He is a principal author of a widely used text in water resources systems planning and management. During periods of leave from Cornell, Loucks has conducted research and taught at Harvard, MIT, TU-Delft, TU-Wien, TU-Aachen, UNESCO-IHE, Colorado (Boulder), Adelaide, and Texas (Austin) Universities, and worked at the World Bank, the US Army Corps of Engineering Institute for Water Resources, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. He has served as an employee and/or consultant to private and government agencies, various organizations of the United Nations, and NATO, on projects involving regional water resources and economic development planning in Asia, Australia, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America.