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Research
InFEWS supports students doing interdisciplinary work, with projects ranging from capturing and reusing nutrients and water in organic waste products, development of small-scale water and energy technologies necessary for the agricultural sector and developing infrastructures and lifecycle methodologies to collect integrated information and data on food, energy, and water systems. Sample projects across our three challenge areas are found below:
Distributed FEWS Systems
Distributed generation & storage technologies for communities in transition that support energy services, water quality and access, and healthy food systems.
- Geospatial patterns of food, energy, water waste sources
- Food-energy- water-information nexus in enabling off-grid energy services:
- Analytic/empirical studies
- Biomass and hydro energy linking decarbonization paths for local and distributed energy systems
- Water-storage capacity versus water and energy use efficiency – addressing the challenges of food security and climate change
Converting Urban Waste into Food, Energy, and Water
- Production of fertilizer and energy from high-strength residential, municipal, and agricultural wastes
- Estimation of demand for fertilizer recovered from fecal sludge or wastewater streams
The Internet of Food
Tracking, analyzing and managing food supply chains with embedded energy, water and green house gases.
- Best Practices for sustainable sugarcane production in Brazil: Considering the FEWS supply chain
- The Chocolate Fix: FEWS biotechnologies and a sustainable cacao supply
- An analytical framework and decision tools for management of food, energy, and water systems in the face of increasing climate and population stressors
- Creating quality of life metrics for evaluating sustainable global FEWS supply chains
- Global implications of incorporating modern biology in FEW systems: genetic/transgenic techniques
Publications
Burt, Zachary, Ayşe Ercümen, Narayana Billava, and Isha Ray. 2018. “From Intermittent to Continuous Service: Costs, Benefits, Equity and Sustainability of Water System Reforms in Hubli-Dharwad, India.” World Development109 (C): 121–33.
Chapman, Margaret P., Jonathan Lacotte, Aviv Tamar, Donggun Lee, Kevin M. Smith, Victoria Cheng, Jaime F. Fisac, Susmit Jha, Marco Pavone, and Claire J. Tomlin. 2019. “A Risk-Sensitive Finite-Time Reachability Approach for Safety of Stochastic Dynamic Systems.” ArXiv:1902.11277 [Cs], February. http://arxiv.org/abs/1902.11277.
Chapman, Margaret P., Kevin M. Smith, Victoria Cheng, David L. Freyberg, and Claire J. Tomlin. 2018. “Reachability Analysis as a Design Tool for Stormwater Systems.” 2018 IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/sustech.2018.8671362.
Cohen, Alasdair, and Isha Ray. 2018. “The Global Risks of Increasing Reliance on Bottled Water.” Nature Sustainability1 (7): 327. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0098-9.
Epstein, Kathleen, Jessica DiCarlo, Robin Marsh, Bikash Adhikari, Dinesh Paudel, Isha Ray, and Inger Måren. 2018. “Recovery and Adaptation after the 2015 Nepal Earthquakes: A Smallholder Household Perspective.” Ecology and Society23 (1). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09909-230129.
Hyun, Christopher, Zachary Burt, Yoshika Crider, Kara Nelson, Sharada C.S. Prasad, Swati Rayasam, William Tarpeh, and Isha Ray. (in press) “Sanitation in low-income countries: A cross-disciplinary review.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
Jacome, Veronica, and Isha Ray. 2018. The Prepaid Electric Meter: Rights, Relationships and Reification in Unguja, Tanzania. Vol. 105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.01.007.
Kumar, Tanu, Alison E. Post, and Isha Ray. 2018. “Flows, Leaks and Blockages in Informational Interventions: A Field Experimental Study of Bangalore’s Water Sector.” World Development106 (C): 149–60.
Moreno, L.C., Tran, T. Potts, M.D. (in review) Consider a Broccoli Stalk: Does Edibility Matter in Household Food Waste Measurement? Journal of Environmental Management.
Prasad, C. S. Sharada, and Isha Ray. 2018. “When the Pits Fill up: A Day in the Life of Sanitation Workers in Urban India.” November 18, 2018. https://www.indiawaterportal.org/articles/when-pits-fill-day-life-sanitation-workers-urban-india.
Prasad, C. S. Sharada, and Isha Ray. 2019. “When the Pits Fill up: (In)Visible Flows of Waste in Urban India.” Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development9 (2): 338–47. https://doi.org/10.2166/washdev.2019.153.
Prasad, Sharada, and Isha Ray. 2018. “‘When You Start Doing This Work It Is Hard to Eat Dal’: Life and Work of Manual Scavengers.” Economic and Political Weekly53 (August): 25–27.
Ray, Isha, Narayana Billava, Zachary Burt, and John Colford. 2015. “From Intermittent to Continuous Water Supply.” Economic and Political Weekly 53 (49): 7–8.
Rayasam, Swati D. G., Isha Ray, Kirk R. Smith, and Lee W. Riley. 2019. “Extraintestinal Pathogenic Escherichia Coli and Antimicrobial Drug Resistance in a Maharashtrian Drinking Water System.” The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene100 (5): 1101–4. https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.18-0542.
Siegner, Alana, and Natalie Stapert. 2019. “Climate Change Education in the Humanities Classroom: A Case Study of the Lowell School Curriculum Pilot.” Environmental Education Research0 (0): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1607258.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DGE-1633740. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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