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Cornell University

Critical Infrastructure Systems Lab

Connecting climate, water, and energy

Highlights

Dam planning and hydrological alterations in the Mekong

Several countries in the Mekong River basin are caught in the tension between ensuring cheap power security, exploiting locally-available hydropower resources, and protecting ecosystems from the impact of dams. Are there options for addressing the trade-off between these conflicting objectives?

We show that dam re-operation efforts could yield tangible opportunities for partially restoring key elements of hydrological variability without affecting hydropower production. In fact, changing production plans across a few critical dams could even raise hydropower revenues.

We also focussed on the planned expansion of the hydropower fleet and show that Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia have tangible opportunities for meeting projected electricity demand and CO2 emission targets with less hydropower than currently planned. The key enabling strategies for these options to succeed are solar energy and regional coordination, expressed in the form of centralized planning and cross-border power trading.

Key publications and software

The Greater Mekong’s climate-water-energy nexus

Spatially-coherent droughts are a major threat to the proper functioning of Southeast Asia’s power supply and decarbonization policies, all depending on hydropower supply and long-distance power transfers.

Here, we focus on the Laotian-Thai grid—the largest power infrastructure in the region—for which we developed a model representing the relationship between hydro-climatological conditions, water availability, and power system behavior.

We show that prolonged droughts in the Mekong basin reduce hydropower production by about 4,000 GWh/ year, increasing the annual production costs and CO2 emissions by about US$ 120 millions and 2.5 million metric tonnes, respectively. These events are largely explained by the periodic oscillations in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean that modulate water availability in Southeast Asia. Our findings can help reduce the carbon footprint of power systems and inform the design of hydroelectric dams.

Key publications and software

Eight centuries of Asia’s river patterns

Ten of the world’s biggest rivers are located entirely within the Asian Monsoon region. They provide water, energy, and food for 1.7 billion people. To manage these critical resources, we need a better understanding of river discharge—how does it change over a long time? Are there common variation patterns among rivers?

To answer these questions, we use information derived from tree rings to reconstruct average annual river discharge history at 62 gauges in 16 Asian countries. Our reconstruction reveals the riparian footprint of megadroughts and large volcanic eruptions over the past eight centuries. We show that simultaneous droughts and pluvials have often occurred at adjacent river basins in the past, because Asian rivers share common influences from the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans. We also show how these oceanic teleconnections change over space and time.

Key publications and software

Towards monthly streamflow reconstructions

Long records of river discharge, reconstructed from tree rings, help us understand how rivers behaved in response to past climates, and place projected climate changes in a broader perspective. While this knowledge is valuable, streamflow reconstructions have rarely been used to directly inform water management models, because tree rings are annual while water system models require streamflow data of higher resolutions, such as monthly or weekly.

In our study, we use a rich network of tree ring data, consisting of both ring widths and stable oxygen isotope ratios, to reconstruct monthly river discharge at four key gauging stations that represent the four main tributaries of the Chao Phraya River, Thailand, thus bridging the gap between tree rings and water management. Our reconstructions, spanning 254 years (1750–2003), are the first monthly streamflow reconstructions outside North America, and the first ones that combine ring width and oxygen isotope data. Importantly, the reconstructions provide a detailed accounting of past droughts, pluvials, and wet season timings.

Key publications and software

A workbench for studying smart water networks

Numerical simulation models are a fundamental tool for planning and managing smart water networks—an evolution of water distribution systems in which physical assets are monitored and controlled by information and communication technologies. While simulation models allow us to understand the interactions between physical processes and abstract control strategies, they ignore key implementation aspects of distributed control systems, such as the required communication over digital links.

In this work, we fill this gap by introducing DHALSIM (Digital HydrAuLic SIMulator), a numerical modelling platform combining EPANET-based process simulation with a network and host emulation environment, offering a high-fidelity representation of the processes occurring in the cyber domain. We also illustrate how DHALSIM enables research opportunities in the domain of cyber-physical security.

Key publications and software

Characterizing cyber-physical attacks on water distribution systems

This is a pivotal project in the domain of urban water, as it exposed for the first time the risks associated to cyber-attacks on water distribution systems.

In the course of this project, we developed epanetCPA (the first software simulating the impact of attacks on water networks), organized the BATADAL (an international data competition to benchmark the performance of attack detection algorithms), and reconstructed a recent history of cyber-attacks on water infrastructures.

Key publications and software