Research

Drawing on a survey effort involving more than 8,000 households, my doctoral research at Stanford builds an empirical foundation for evaluating and improving infrastructure service delivery. I develop metrics, spatial analyses, and decision-support tools to compare provision systems, identify service gaps, assess environmental risk, and guide infrastructure planning and policy.

Research Areas

Service Measurement

I develop end-user metrics and field methods that turn household experiences and service conditions into comparable measures of infrastructure performance.

Current work

Preference-aware measurement and modeling of end-user water service quality

Uses large-scale household survey data to develop and validate the Water Service Quality Score (WSQS), a multidimensional household-level metric for comparing service performance across piped supply, groundwater, tanker delivery, surface water, and commercial provision systems.

Manuscript in preparation

Conceptual workflow for measuring end-user water service.

Infrastructure Regimes and Policy Simulation

I evaluate how service quality varies across provision regimes and which interventions can produce the greatest gains under budget and capacity constraints.

Current work

Structural standardization and policy simulation for urban water systems

Uses structural standardization and household-level counterfactual prediction to compare service quality across provision regimes, separate regime-level differences from household composition, and evaluate feasible interventions under budget, capacity, and targeting constraints.

Manuscripts in preparation

Spatial Evidence and Planning Tools

I connect household-reported service conditions with geographic, environmental, and infrastructure context to identify gaps and compare performance across household, community, service-area, and regional scales.

Current work

Global water service metrics platform

Transforms household survey data into standardized service metrics, spatial visualizations, and benchmarks for researchers, agencies, and community partners.

Under development

Layered spatial evidence combining service, infrastructure, environmental, and base-map information across household, community, service-area, and regional scales.

Climate, Infrastructure, and Environmental Health

I examine how hydro-climatic conditions, water quality, and infrastructure access interact to shape environmental health risks.

Current work

Climate, water quality, and kidney stone disease risk in Sri Lanka

Integrates environmental, clinical, climate, and spatial data to examine how hydro-climatic conditions, water quality, and local infrastructure relate to kidney stone disease risk in Sri Lanka.

Interdisciplinary collaboration

Infrastructure Data Systems and Decision Support

I structure standards, assets, project records, hazards, and workflows into connected data systems that support infrastructure planning, oversight, and project delivery.

Current work

Graph systems and decision support for infrastructure planning

Develops graph-based and AI-assisted data models that connect engineering documents, standards, assets, spatial information, hazards, and workflows to support infrastructure planning, project delivery, and oversight.

Independent project exploration

Conceptual flow from infrastructure data inputs to structured knowledge, planning insight, and decision support.

See related publications and presentations →

Methods

  • Household surveys and field measurement
  • Qualitative and mixed-methods research
  • Statistical modeling and machine learning
  • Causal inference and standardization
  • Policy simulation and scenario analysis
  • Spatial analysis and mapping
  • Sensing and field instrumentation
  • Decision-support and planning tools
  • Data modeling and knowledge infrastructure
  • Stakeholder engagement and research partnerships

Research Vision

Infrastructure is often evaluated by what is built or supplied rather than by how people actually experience it. My research develops new ways to measure infrastructure performance from the perspective of households and communities, creating evidence that can better inform planning, investment, and public policy.

Water systems provide the foundation for this work because they expose many of the challenges shared across infrastructure: fragmented service delivery, spatial inequality, environmental change, and limited information about performance at the user level.

Although my current research centers on water systems, the broader objective is to develop transferable methods to improve infrastructure services across sectors, including energy, transportation, sanitation, and other public systems.

Conceptual diagram of a research agenda expanding from water to other infrastructure systems.