Effective and Equitable Stakeholder Engagement in Water Quality Management

Abstract Submission: In a series of five recent and ongoing papers, the EWRI Watershed Management Technical Committee has been providing guidance on holistic watershed management with equitable stakeholder participation across five themes: (i) a water quality model selection algorithm that allows for participatory modeling (Sridharan et al. 2021), (ii) remote sensing technologies to identify impairment in a cost-effective and accurate manner (Abhiram et al. In prep.), (iii) the use of GIS and remote sensing data in water quality modeling and stakeholder engagement (Quinn et al. 2022), (iv) incorporating water quality management implementation during the modeling phase to streamline the stakeholder engagement process (Borah et al. 2024), and (v) incorporating diversity, equity, inclusivity, and justice in water quality management (Quinn et al. In prep.). Several examples, counterexamples, and hypothetical case studies presented in these papers help push the needle on equitable water quality management using modern geospatial data and modeling tools. A unifying framework with a toolkit to implement the holistic and equitable watershed management concepts presented in these five papers will be presented.

Learning Objectives/Expected Outcome (Optional) : We hope that attendees will get interested in how to effectively and equitable conduct participatory water quality modeling and stakeholder engagement for watershed management as one of the outcomes of this talk. Another outcome anticipated is that multiple ideas presented with common themes in recent papers from engineering and sociological perspectives will be presented within an unifying framework of stakeholder engagement using modern tools. This will help attendees gain a novel perspective on participative water quality management.