In September 2014, Prof. Royce Francis received a three-year, $302,592 National Science Foundation grant for his collaborative research project “RIPS Type 2 Collaborative Research: Water and Electricity Infrastructure in the Southeast (WEIS) - Approaches to Resilient Interdependent Systems under Climate Change.” The grant was awarded under the NSF Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Processes and Systems (RIPS) competition and includes collaborators from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington.
In his research, Prof. Francis will be addressing concern that climate change may become irreversible if anthropogenic emissions are not checked. While many efforts to address climate change have focused on reducing emissions by shifting the way we eat, changing the way we commute, and altering our indoor environment, far fewer efforts have been focused on adaptation of infrastructure to climatic changes. Climate change hazards can come in many forms, including extreme weather events such as flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, sea level rise, and extreme temperature events. All of these hazards can breach vulnerabilities in nearly every infrastructure system.
Prof. Francis’ multidisciplinary research team includes civil engineers, decision scientists, behavioral economists, computer scientists, risk analysts, and hydrologists working together to study the implications of climate change for the electric power and water supply interdependent critical infrastructures systems, developing a general methodology. These systems are closely connected in what is sometimes referred to as the “water-energy nexus.”
While there may be competing demands for water services that affect the availability of water for the power sector (and thus its reliability), without reliable power supply, the water supply system cannot operate. Most research on the water-energy nexus has focused on the Western U.S., where aridity and droughts are common. Climate-induced water risks in the Eastern U.S., the focus area of Prof. Francis’ research, have been less extensively studied, even though this region has large population centers and is expected to see changes in the hydrological cycle as a result of climate change.