500 West 120th Street
918 Mudd, Dept. of Earth & Environmental Eng.
Columbia University, MC 4711
New York, NY, 10027
Dr. Upmanu Lall is a leading expert on hydroclimatology, climate change adaptation, risk analysis and mitigation. His research has emphasized hydrology, water resource systems analysis, operations research and stochastic processes with applications to flood/drought risk and uncertainty assessment and the design and operation of water systems. He has pioneered the application of techniques from (a) nonlinear dynamical systems, (b) nonparametric methods of function estimation and their application to spatio-temporal dynamical systems, and (c) the study of multi-scale climate variability and change as an integral component of hydrologic systems. As new knowledge was created in these areas, he has focused on its application to water resources management through innovation in adaptive or dynamic risk management methods that can use information on the structure of climate for simulation or forecasting. Recently, he has become concerned with the issue of global and regional water sustainability, and the more general issue of modeling and managing planetary change due to coupled human and natural dynamics. He is developing technical and policy tools for the projection and management of environmental change as part of a quantitative approach to sustainability of earth systems.
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, University of
Texas, Austin, TX, 1981
M.S. in Civil Engineering, University of
Texas, Austin, TX, 1980
B. Tech in Civil Engineering, I.I.T. Kanpur,
India, 1976
Global Water Security
Hydro-climate
modeling
Time series analysis and forecasting
Bayes Networks for Process Modeling and
Decision Making
Risk and reliability
Water
Resource Management using Climate Information
Current Research Projects
1.
Climate Predictability of Extreme
Floods with Y. Kushnir, A Robertson,J. Nakamura
2.
CCRUN: Climate Change RISA in Urban Areas, C. Rosenzweig (PI) with U. Lall,
P. Kinney, S. Someshwar & L. Goddard, R. Chen, and Y. Kushnir
3. Reconstructing
Climate From Tree Ring Data A.
Gelman (PI), with E. Cook and U. Lall
4. Paleoclimate
Shocks:Environmental Variability,Human Vulnerability, and Social Adaptation During
The Last Millennium In The Greater Mekong Basin, Buckley, B., (PI); with
Anchukaitis,K., Cook, B., Heikkila, T., Lall,U., Cook, E., Levy, M
5. Improving
rural water and livelihood outcomes in India, China, Africa, and Brazil, with
T. Heikkila, V. Modi, J. Sachs
6. Sustainable Development of Water Resources in
Ethiopia: Learning from doing in Koraro, with P. Block
Undergraduate: Hydrology, Water Resources Engineering, Computations And Computer Analysis, Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, Operations Research II, Systems Analysis For Civil Engineers, Water Project Analysis, Groundwater Hydrology; Earth Resources and the Environment; A Better Planet by Design
Graduate:
Groundwater Hydrology, Statistics in Water Resources, Water Resource Systems
Analysis, Optimization Of Large Systems, Applied Probability Theory,
Statistical Decision Theory, Hydro-electric Power, Stochastic Hydrology, Groundwater
Contaminant Transport, Groundwater Quantity and Quality Modeling, Spatial
Hydrologic Analysis, Physical Hydrology, Low Frequency Climatic Variability,
Environmental Statistics, Water Management & Development