EDT: Mathematical Methods for Water Problems

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This project provides graduate students with tools needed to recognize opportunities for development of mathematical approaches to challenges related to global environmental change, from physics to biology to society, using as the common denominator the subject of water. These environmental and societal challenges involve many complex factors, and students will be trained to apply and implement mathematical strategies that effectively address these complexities. Essential to the training will be opportunities afforded by visits to important European policy centers, such as the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria) and the Stockholm Resilience Center, where policy issues are articulated and integrated with scientific analyses. The overarching goal of this project is to offer an avenue to train talented mathematical scientists to contribute substantively to the understanding of the interactions between society and nature and to formulate well-founded strategies to manage these interactions to assure a sustainable future. This project has received co-funding from the Global Venture Fund of the Office of International Science and Engineering. The mathematical modeling of the problems addressed in this project involves a variety of tools, from game theory and network theory to deterministic and stochastic partial differential equations. The application of powerful analytical and numerical methods to the challenges of modeling water as a societal resource promises significant advances in policy and planning. On the other hand, the questions raised by societal challenges related to water will require new directions of research in game theory and stochastic and deterministic partial differential equations, contributing to advances in mathematics. The interactions among mathematicians and scientists in this project will bring to bear powerful new mathematical perspective and techniques to societal problems surrounding the crucial resource that is water.