Jon Hathaway
Associate Professor Jon Hathaway contributed to award-winning research led by colleagues in the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering (ISE). Masoud Barah (ISE/PhD ’19) whose doctoral research was guided by Associate Professor Anahita Khojandi led the research team. Other contributors include ISE Professor Xueping Li and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Senior Research and Development Staff OluFemi Omitaomu.
The team was honored with the Best Paper Award by Omega journal for their paper “Optimizing green infrastructure placement under precipitation uncertainty,” which was published in April.
Their research is intended to address the impacts of increased urbanization, infrastructure degradation, and climate change on stormwater systems across the nation. The team has developed modeling to determine the optimal placement of green infrastructure practices across a set of locations in a watershed and minimize the total expected runoff under medium-term precipitation uncertainties.
“Stormwater systems are the frontline of the higher intensity storm events expected with climate change,” said Hathaway. “Work at UT continues to build our understanding of how resiliency can be built into this system through interventions such as green infrastructure.”
This can help prevent stormwater systems from becoming overwhelmed. Their research includes a case study for an urban watershed in a mid-sized city in the US, where they performed sensitivity analyses, evaluated the importance of the considered constraints, and provided insights.