Spotlight Profiles
Aris Georgakakos: Helping to Manage the World's Water Resources
Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Professor Aris Georgakakos realized the importance of sustainable water resources management while an undergraduate student at the National Technical University of Athens in his native Greece. Fascinated by the great variety of environmental, ecological, economic, and social factors affecting water resources management, he saw an exciting career path.
"This early career possibility became a true passion after I received a graduate fellowship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," says Georgakakos, a water resources expert who earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in civil and environmental engineering from M.I.T.
Now the Head of CEE’s Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Water Resources Program and Director of the Georgia Water Resources Institute, he continues to be fascinated with the management of large river systems. "Decision makers are facing difficult challenges as water resources stresses and disputes rise all over the world," explains Georgakakos, whose research has taken him to North and South America, Africa, China, India, and Europe. "We can no longer be complacent about sustainable water management, because doing so threatens to erode our quality of life and that of our children," he says. "We need societal decision processes that bring together a broad range of scientific disciplines, experts, and institutions and develop holistic perspectives of issues and solutions."
He and his research team do just that, gathering information and developing prototype decision support tools integrating data, computer technologies, and science and engineering assessment, prediction, and decision methods to assist policy makers with river and reservoir regulation, environmental and ecological protection, agricultural development, energy system planning, and water and benefit sharing.
Georgakakos and his research team members are presently working on a number of different initiatives. Stateside, they are working with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to support the state water resources planning process, and with the California Energy Commission and other agencies on a Sacramento River decision system. In East Africa, under the sponsorship of various international funding organizations (including the World Bank, the United Nations, and European Aid agencies), they continue to develop state of the science information and modeling tools and train scientists and engineers from all Nile Basin countries. In China they are working with the Ministry of Water Resources on a comprehensive forecast-decision system for the Yangtze River. "Every decision system we develop is used by engineers, managers, and policy makers and has a societal impact," says Georgakakos. "For me and my associates, this is great motivation to do what we do.
"I have come to appreciate first hand the compelling need for better informed and qualified scientists, engineers, and policy makers," says Georgakakos. "To this end, we are in the process of establishing an International Water Institute in partnership with the University of Pretoria, in South Africa, that would create a lasting mechanism for delivering interdisciplinary graduate education and help to address water challenges in Africa and elsewhere."
"These are the reasons I stayed at Georgia Tech," says Georgakakos, a twenty-three-year veteran of Tech. "Tech’s flexibility and support enable me to contribute to all aspects of sustainable water resources management: research, education, technology transfer, and policy impact."
More information about Dr. Georgakakos can be found on his CEE Faculty website.
Georgia Water Resources Institute website.