Research
My research studies how infrastructure systems perform for people in urban, peri-urban, and rapidly developing regions. I focus on the gap between infrastructure provision and everyday service experience: how households receive services, how agencies measure performance, and how planning and policy decisions can improve reliability, equity, efficiency, and resilience.
At Stanford, my doctoral work centers on water service systems as a core infrastructure setting. I use household surveys, fieldwork, qualitative interviews, statistical and machine-learning methods, causal inference, policy simulation, sensing, and spatial data tools to understand how infrastructure systems work in practice and how they can be measured, managed, and improved.
The longer-term agenda extends beyond water to other critical infrastructure systems where service delivery, public agencies, environmental stress, and community experience intersect.
Research Areas
Service Measurement
Developing end-user metrics, survey instruments, and field methods to measure how infrastructure systems perform for households and communities. This work is especially important in rapidly developing regions where formal, informal, centralized, and decentralized service arrangements often coexist.
Infrastructure Regimes and Policy Simulation
Modeling how provision regimes, household contexts, institutional constraints, and investment choices shape service quality, equity, and reliability. This work uses household-level data, counterfactual modeling, and simulation methods to compare alternative infrastructure futures under real-world constraints.
Spatial Evidence and Planning Tools
Translating household-level and community-scale data into maps, benchmarks, and planning-oriented visual summaries. These tools help researchers, communities, and public agencies compare service conditions, identify gaps, and prioritize infrastructure improvements.
Climate, Environment, and Infrastructure Risk
Studying how climate stress, environmental exposure, and infrastructure service conditions interact in rapidly changing regions. This work connects water quality, hydro-climatic variability, hazard exposure, and service access to questions of public health, resilience, and infrastructure planning.
Infrastructure Data Systems and Decision Support
Exploring how structured data models, graph-based representations, and decision-support tools can connect infrastructure standards, project documents, risks, hazards, assets, and workflows. This work supports infrastructure planning, hazard mitigation, project delivery, and public-agency decision-making.
Current Projects
Preference-aware measurement and modeling of end-user water service quality in heterogeneous water provision systems
Develops and validates a survey-based metric for end-user water service quality across heterogeneous provision systems. The work uses household-reported service dimensions and statistical modeling to examine how reliability, access, quality, quantity, customer service, and satisfaction shape overall service experience.
Structural standardization of water service quality under provision regime heterogeneity
Uses structural standardization and household-level modeling to compare water service quality across provision regimes while accounting for household and contextual differences.
Improving infrastructure service delivery under resource constraints
Develops a household-level policy simulation framework to evaluate how alternative service regimes and investment choices affect water service quality, equity, and delivery outcomes under resource and feasibility constraints.
Water Service Metrics Dashboard
Developing a research dashboard from household survey data and baseline service-quality models to translate field data into standardized water service metrics, benchmarks, and planning-oriented visual summaries. Data development and fieldwork have been supported by the King Center on Global Development.
Climate, water quality, and kidney stone disease risk in Sri Lanka
Exploring how hydro-climatic conditions, water quality, microclimate, and environmental factors may be associated with kidney stone disease risk in Sri Lanka, in collaboration with Stanford School of Medicine and Sri Lankan clinical and hydrogeology partners.
Graph systems and decision support for infrastructure planning
Building graph-based data models and decision-support tools to connect infrastructure standards, project documents, risks, hazards, assets, and workflows. This work explores how structured infrastructure knowledge can support planning, hazard mitigation, project delivery, and public-agency decision-making.
Community-based environmental research partnerships
Examining how community-based organizations and academic researchers collaborate in environmental research, with attention to institutional constraints, funding structures, compensation, power dynamics, and pathways for more equitable partnership models.
See the full list on the Publications & Presentations page →
Methods & Tools
- Household surveys and field measurement
- Mixed-methods and qualitative interviews
- Statistical modeling and machine learning
- Causal inference and structural standardization
- Policy simulation and scenario analysis
- Spatial data, mapping, and visual analytics
- Sensing and prototype-based measurement
- Decision-support dashboards and research tools
- Graph-based data models for infrastructure workflows
- Stakeholder interviews and field-based research partnerships
Long-Term Research Vision
My long-term research goal is to develop ways of measuring, modeling, and improving infrastructure systems based on how people actually experience them. I aim to combine field data, systems modeling, spatial evidence, sensing, and decision-support tools to help agencies and communities improve the performance, efficiency, equity, and resilience of critical infrastructure services.
Water is the starting point of this agenda, but the broader vision extends to other infrastructure systems that shape everyday life in cities and rapidly developing regions, including wastewater, stormwater, energy, mobility, solid waste, and the built environment.