RESEARCH OVERVIEW

Our research revolves around integrating data and models to investigate the impact of urbanization, climate change, and urban water infrastructure (UWI) on urban watershed hydrology and water quality, explore solutions to increase the sustainability of urban water infrastructure as part of civil critical infrastructure and quantify the coupled dynamics of urban water infrastructure/watershed management and water quality in uncertain environments. Our research mainly includes the following directions:

• Data-Driven Modeling and Processing of Hydro-Environmental Signals

Utilize signal processing and data-driven analytics to assess the time-frequency characteristics of hydro-environmental signals (Zhang et al., 2023, WRR, Zhang & Chui, 2018, HP), identify the embedding dynamics of them, and make predictions (Zhang et al., 2023, GRL, Zhang et al., 2023, WRR).

• Urban Hydrologic Modeling

Develop and utilize data-driven (Horvath et al., 2023, EST) and physically-based hydrologic models (Zhang & Chui, 2018, JH, Zhang & Chui, 2020, JH, Zhang & Parolari, 2022) to characterize urban hydrologic processes and assess the flood mitigation, hydrologic restoration, and water quality improvement performance of green stormwater infrastructure at various spatial scales and provide design and planning recommendations (Zhang & Chui, 2017, HP, Zhang & Chui, 2020, HP; Zhang & Chui, under review).

• Urban Stormwater Instrumentation and Monitoring

Design and implement field monitoring and sampling campaigns to assess the complicated hydro-environmental processes happening within green stormwater infrastructure (Zhang et al., 2022, JHE), and assess their impact on watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry (Lam et al., 2024, STOTEN, Zhang & Parolari, in preparation).