Completed Projects
Research Area: Groundwater
Presently more than 100 million people in Asia are consuming groundwater with arsenic concentrations exceeding standards recommended by the World Health Organization. Arsenic originating from Himalayan sediment transported down the major rivers of Asia and deposited within low-lying basins and deltas contaminates underlying aquifers.
Research Area: Food security
Biofuel development contributes most effectively to rural income growth when you can have vertical integration. People all along the value chain have to be making money. The emerging connections between agriculture and energy markets are complex, but can be advantageous if handled carefully - Siwa Msangi This project seeks to quantify how different scenarios of expanded biofuels production in rich and poor countries will affect global and regional food prices, farmer incomes, food consumption of the poor, and climate.
Research Area: Urban service delivery, Water quality & treatment
Little work has been done to explore intermediate options between promoting household point-of-use (POU) water treatment technologies (treating drinking water in the home) and expensive city-wide networked water treatment (piped water to individual households). The project addresses this technology gap by developing and evaluating low-cost, in-line chlorination systems that can reduce contamination of drinking water in low-income areas of Dhaka, Bangladesh. This project is in collaboration with Dr.
Research Area: Food security
To validate his hypothesis that water stress is the main culprit decreasing corn and soybean production in the Midwest, and to help differentiate the different mechanisms impacting crop yields at higher temperatures, Dr. Lobell’s research team used a model known as an Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM). High temperatures had a strong negative effect on corn yield response in the United States, in agreement with the data, but the predominant effect of heat in the model was via increased water stress.
Research Area: Infrastructure policy & planning, Rural services & development, Technology development
The Extreme Poverty, Infrastructure and Climate Initiative (EPIC) aims to amplify the poverty-alleviating impacts of infrastructure investments, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2030, eight of every ten people living in extreme poverty are projected to be located in rural Sub-Saharan African households. These households are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts as they often rely on smallholder farming for subsistence and are greatly impacted by extreme weather events.
