By Jacob Becker
Last week I sat down with David Gorelick to learn more about his work modeling risk for water utilities. David Gorelick is a PhD student in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at UNC Chapel Hill and a research assistant at the University of North Carolina’s Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems. His current research focuses on identification and mitigation of physical and financial risks to urban water utilities in the United States. We spoke about the tools he is developing to quantify uncertainty and how his academic findings can be useful for stakeholders.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
Jacob Becker:
Let’s start out with an easy one, what’s the title of your thesis?
David Gorelick:
It’s kind of a working title: Supply and Financial Risks to Water Utilities Under Uncertainty. It’s very broad.
Jacob B:
And a large part of that is developing a model, right?
David G:
Yeah, we are constantly thinking about what sorts of tools utilities might benefit from to help them mitigate risks that they face. We incorporate new ideas into models that we build of their water balance operations and figure out how to model the greater [water] system itself. We add different river flows and different precipitation cases. We’re expanding a broad set of uncertainty to try to see how well the tools we develop work under a whole range of future possibilities.
Jacob B:
Cool, so is the tool you’re designing more of a generalized tool or specific tool? Or maybe a better question is who is the general audience for your tool? Is it for researchers or something you’re planning on giving to a utility or utilities in general to help them make decisions?
David G:
The tool is a model pretty much just for academic use. What we get out of it, the outputs from the model and the takeaways we’ve learned from using it, those sorts of things are what we present to the utilities. The results from the model are shown to them, and they can use it as a decision-making tool through us, but it’s not something they would ever directly use.
Jacob B:
Are the results you’re are coming up with a more generalized for water utilities in general, or are you looking at the specific utility and then coming up with results that are specific to them?
David G:
This is sort of a question we struggle with and go back and forth on. What we’re trying to develop are generalized solutions for all water utilities, or at least those in the United States, but at the level of specificity that we need to model them to feel confident that our results are accurate at all it becomes a pretty site specific. I think that to some degree the tools that we’re developing might be something that only works for one or two cases, but the long-term goal is to make them more broad than that.
Jacob B:
Are there any specific things you found that you do feel are generalizable so far?
David G:
Yeah, we found some general stuff and because the takeaways that we’re looking for are general, I think they also tend to sometimes be kind of obvious. What we’re doing is developing new tools for utilities to supplement the management strategies they already use. When we develop these new tools, our takeaways tend to be something like: when we add diversity to the portfolio of tools utilities have available to them, it makes it easier for them to manage their risks, and so that’s probably the most general take away we have. Others are related to the inputs that we force the models to deal with. A common theme is when demand growth reaches a certain point it becomes very difficult for the utilities to meet their long-term goals for performance. Again, I think that’s kind of an obvious goal, but the specifics of how the utilities reach [these goals] are not quite so obvious. The models can help us with those.
Jacob B:
Yeah, also a lot of times you need to point out obvious things with data for people to accept it too.
David G:
Yeah that does help. Utilities often have working relationships with consulting groups that do similar work to what we do. The advantage we have as academics is more freedom to show them information they don’t necessarily want to hear or that they weren’t really expecting us to provide (since they don’t pay our bills). Because of this they’ve been very open with us, and I think happy with the critiques we provide.
Jacob B:
Any interesting utility interactions you want to share?
David G:
Sometimes we sort of strongly hint that we think the way they’re operating a small portion of their system, handling drought conditions or something along those lines, is not necessarily the most optimal strategy. It’s nothing new to them usually, but sometimes they just need to hear it through someone else’s mouth.
Photo Credit: University of North Carolina’s Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems
Feature Image: The Research Triangle Region of North Carolina, including its four primary water utilities (Cary, Durham, Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA), and Raleigh. Photo Credit: University of North Carolina’s Center on Financial Risk in Environmental Systems
About the Author: Jacob Becker is a second-year master’s candidate pursuing a dual masters in City and Regional Planning and Environmental Sciences and Engineering. His research interests include mapping air pollution, climate change adaptation and transitioning to clean energy sources. For fun, Jacob takes his mind off the slow heat death of the planet by hiking around it and indulging in improv and sketch comedy. Jacob received his undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Chicago.