As water scarcity becomes increasingly prevalent worldwide, the imperative to address the challenge of not only providing clean and affordable water but also feeding a growing population has heightened. In this context, water desalination and reuse have emerged in the past few decades as compelling solutions. However, the adoption and impacts of these solutions are affected by a complex interplay of local policy, economic, social, and environmental factors across various regions. To meet our climate and clean energy goals while achieving water security it is important to have comprehensive tools to capture tradeoffs and feedback loops across policy regimes. Here, I will discuss a novel data-driven assessment tool to holistically capture the implications of technological adaptation at scale. This method relies on matching primary and secondary environmental, economic, and social data to map and assess the potential risks and benefits of a technological adaptation and inform the decision-making process on technology uptake, deployment scale, and pathways to identify and abate potential social and environmental risks.

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Dr. Newsha Ajami is an internationally recognized expert in sustainable water resource management, smart cities, water policy, and finance. Currently, she serves as the Chief Strategic Development Officer for Research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) where she spearheads interdisciplinary and impact-driven research initiatives at the nexus of water, energy, and climate. Over the years, she has led groundbreaking research using data science principles to study the human and policy dimensions of resilient urban water and hydrologic systems, particularly in the context of a changing climate.

In addition to her role at LBL, Dr. Ajami holds other key leadership positions. She is a mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and served two terms as a gubernatorial appointee to the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board. She contributes her expertise to the National Academies Board on Water Science and Technology and serves as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. Furthermore, Dr. Ajami is an active member of several state-level and national advisory boards. She also serves as a director on both for-profit and non-profit Boards.

Prior to her tenure at LBL, Dr. Ajami founded and directed the Stanford Urban Water Policy program and served as a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. She also held a prestigious Science, Policy, and Technology fellowship at the California State Senate’s Natural Resources and Water Committee, where she contributed to shaping water and energy-related legislation.

Dr. Ajami has published many highly cited pioneering research articles and co-authored three books. Her work has garnered widespread attention from prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, and PBS, among others. She is frequently featured as an invited speaker at high-level events and conferences. She received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Irvine, an M.S. in Hydrology and Water Resources from the University of Arizona, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran.