RESEARCH | KWEST Lab

The KWEST Lab conducts research on transitioning our environmental infrastructure to be more sustainable and resilient.  Current work focuses on  understanding the state of our municipal water infrastructure, the cost and environmental tradeoffs for water treatment, and the environmental impacts of fossil fuel energy generation.

Research in the KWEST Lab focuses on three areas: 

1. Processes.  What are the new technical processes that we need for the infrastructure of 2050?  Are there emerging process that society can use to improve our energy and water systems?  What are the opportunities to improve technologies and the performance targets they need to meet in order to be useful.  To answer these questions, we use environmental life-cycle assessment, unit operations modeling, techno-economic assessment, and optimization.
2. Policies.  What are the polcies that society needs to guide our transition to the infrastructure of 2050?  Are there new methods that we can use to analyze infrastrucutre policy?  How do we better model socio-technical systems where infrastructure interacts with policy to improve societal decsion making.  To answer these questions, we use benefit-cost analysis, econometrics, policy studies, and economic theory.
3. People. What are the ways that people will value and make decisions about the infrastructure of 2050?  How do people make decisions about infrastructure as individual users and members of society?  Can we create tools to help people make better decisions about infrastructure? How do people value their infrastructure systems and how can we incorporate these valuations into policy making?  To answer these questions, we use decision analysis, risk perception, deliberative processes, and decision support tools.

In the KWEST Lab, these areas aren't disconnected from each other.  Instead, we find ways to use process models to guide public and private decision making.  We study ways to incorporate different policy scenarios into technology analysis.  We develop new methods to help people interpret the results from process models and to synthesize individual decision making with public policy. 

To date, our work has been funded by the National Alliance for Water Innovation.