Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.
~Lao Tzu
Welcome !!
The MO WATER group consists of watershed hydrology researchers of School of Infrastructure, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. Our research focuses on simulating hydrological processes using reliable, simpler and parsimonious tools such as water balance models (SWAT, HEC-HMS, GR4J), machine-learning (ANN, RNN, LSTM, RVM) and data analytics-based models, utilizing measured/monitored as well as remote sensing-derived datasets. These models find applications in modeling/monitoring/early warning of hydrological extremes (droughts, floods), modeling of local-scale food-energy-water nexus and development of decision support system (DSS).
The group gratefully acknowledges mentors, collaborators and teachers who have been an inspiration to us: Prof. Rao Govindaraju (Purdue University), Prof. P P Mujumdar (IISc Bangalore), Prof. R K Panda (IIT Bhubaneswar), Prof. U C Mohanty (IIT Bhubaneswar), Prof. C S P Ojha (IIT Roorkee), Prof. Rajib Maity (IIT Kharagpur), Prof. Binayak Mohanty (TAMU), Prof. Jörg Dietrich (Leibniz University Hannover), and Prof. Meghna Babbar-Sebens (Oregon State University) among others who have been role models themselves. Sincere thanks to the School of Infrastructure & IIT Bhubaneswar fraternity for their constant support and encouragement.
Note: In the regional language (Odiya) of Odisha, 'mo' (ମୋ ) means 'my'.
AREAS OF RESEARCH
Water Resources Engineering
Surface Water Balance Modeling
Hydrologic Frequency Analysis (Droughts & Floods)
Climate Change Impact Assessment
Drought Monitoring & Modeling
Hydro-meteorological Data Monitoring
Agricultural Resources Management
Food-Energy-Water Nexus
Groundwater Hydrology
Applications of Remote Sensing & GIS
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Hydro-meteorological data monitoring and AWS-based data collection in Odisha
Development of hydrometeorological monitoring stations at few locations in the state of Odisha has been undertaken under different sponsored research projects in the last few years, and there are state-of-the-art laboratory facilities in place at our Institute for water resources research. We installed digital water level recorder (DWLR) and staff gauges at the outlet points in study micro-watersheds of Dhenkanal district to generate observed streamflow data for regional hydrological modeling studies. This is complemented by the current meter data collected on a daily basis at the gauging locations. More
Linking outputs of GCM with crop growth model to study impacts of climate change on water demand
To examine the impacts of future climate change on crop water requirements of seasonal crops including cereals (maize), pulses, oil crops (groundnut) and vegetable crops (tomato) and root crops (potato) that are grown in a tropical climate watershed, CROPWAT 8.0 model was run for both baseline (1961–1990) and future (2041–2070) climate. Gridded future temperature and rainfall projections from the CanESM2 general circulation model (GCM) under the most severe scenario: shared socio-economic pathway (SSP585) are utilized for impact assessment. More
Rainfall Pattern Drought Index (RPDI) to study climate change impacts on drought patterns
RPDI is a new variant of standardized precipitation index that incorporates the number of rainy days information in addition to magnitude of rainfall to characterize the meteorological drought severity. This bivariate copula-based rainfall pattern drought index (RPDI), available at different time scales (3-, 6- and 12-months) can simulate and compare droughts of future under with todays' for understanding impacts of climate change on droughts. More
RECENT UPDATES
October 2023
Dr. Meenu Ramadas (Team Leader) has been promoted to the role of Associate Professor at IIT Bhubaneswar.
Dr. Shanti Swarup Biswal joins the REWARD-Hydrology project team at IIT Bhubaneswar as Project Manager. Congrats!
September 2023
Siddik Barbhuiya's first authored conference paper titled "Comparing Daily Flow Simulations from SWAT, ANN, and LSTM Models in Tropical Watersheds" gets accepted for oral presentation at HYDRO 2023 INTERNATIONAL, to be held at NIT Warangal in December 2023.
Conference papers of PhD students: Ankita Manekar ["Assessing the impacts of potential climate change on watershed hydrologic response using FDCs"] and Siddik Barbhuiya ["Runoff prediction in a tropical agricultural watershed: a comparison between machine learning-based and conceptual hydrological models"] as first authors, are now available online in the Proceedings of the EWRA2023 World Congress on Water Resources and Environment, held in Greece during June 2023. Way to go!
August 2023
Kartick G M (Ph.D. student) presented his work on "Delineation of Sustainable Groundwater Extraction and Recharge Potential Zones in Agricultural Micro-watersheds Using an Integrated RS-GIS-AHP Approach" as an oral presentation at the 20th Annual Meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS2023) in the session D3-PM2, held at Singapore during 30th July to 4th August, 2023. Congrats!
JULY 2023
Siddik Barbhuiya (Ph.D. student) attended the Capacity Building -cum- Workshop programme on "Application of RS & GIS in LRI under REWARD, Odisha Project" organized by ICAR- NBSS&LUP Regional Centre at Kolkata, during July 24-28, 2023. Congrats!
JUNE 2023
Dr. Meenu Ramadas attended the 12th World Congress on Water Resources and Environment (EWRA 2023) at Thessaloniki, Greece, during June 27-July 01, 2023, to present two student-authored research papers.
MAY 2023
World Bank official team visited the hydro-meteorological monitoring sites in the our REWARD project district Dhenkanal (Odisha) to take stock of the ongoing field work and research activities undertaken by REWARD Hydrology team at IIT Bhubaneswar.
Dr. Meenu Ramadas and project investigators from CUTM attended the exhibition organized by DST-SERB at IIT Delhi during 22nd -23rd May,2023, for showcasing the outcome of the IMPRINT-II C.1 sponsored project “Cost Effective ICT‐Data Analytics System for Efficient Management of Water and Fertilizer in Precision Agriculture” with demonstration of research outputs as poster/video exhibits.
2021-2023 M. Tech. WRE students passed their Masters thesis defense with flying colours :) Congrats and all the best Triveni, Arun, Vikas and Laxmi!!
Our recent work "Impacts of climate change on future crop water demand in an agricultural watershed in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, India" is accepted for publication in Journal of Agrometeorology. View Big congrats to all the authors!
APRIL 2023
Siddik Barbhuiya (Ph.D. student) presented his work "Trend Analysis and Forecasting of Streamflow in the Upper Narmada Basin using Random Forest (RF) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Models" in EGU General Assembly Conference 2023 in Session HS7.10 - Trends and Variations in Hydroclimatic Variables: Links to Climate Variability and Change (virtual). [Abstract] Keep up the good work Siddik!
Daneti Arun Sourya (2021-2023 M. Tech. WRE student) presented his poster on "Development of gridded monthly reference evapotranspiration dataset for Germany for long term trend analysis" in EGU General Assembly Conference 2023 in Session HS7.10 - Trends and Variations in Hydroclimatic Variables: Links to Climate Variability and Change (in virtual mode). [Abstract] Well done Arun!
Triveni Majhi (2021-2023 M. Tech. WRE student) presented her poster on "Evaluation of Best Management Practices (BMPs) For WES Conservation in an Agricultural Watershed" in EGU General Assembly Conference 2023 in Session HS5.9 - Impacts of land use and land cover changes on water resources and water-related ecosystem services: from assessments to solutions (in virtual mode). [Abstract] Congrats Triveni!
Dr. Meenu Ramadas gets the opportunity to be an Associate Editor for the prestigious ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management (JWRPM)
We successfully organized one-day workshop “Climate Resilient Agricultural Water Resources Management: Prospects and Challenges” on April 8, 2023, at School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar. Tweet Tweet Tweet LinkedIn LinkedIn
MARCH 2023
Abstract submitted by Kartick G M has been accepted for oral presentation at the 20th Annual Meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS2023), at SUNTEC Singapore. Congrats Kartick!
We successfully organized the “REWARD-Hydrology Training Workshop” during March 20- March 21, 2023, at School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar, mentored by Principal Investigators of REWARD project. LinkedIn LinkedIn
Kartick G M (Ph.D. student) delivered an oral presentation on his work "Can machine learning and predictor selection algorithms yield reliable streamflow prediction” in ICRDSI-2022, held at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Well done Kartick!
FEBRUARY 2023
Dr. Meenu Ramadas gave seminar on the FEW nexus approach in the Krushi Odisha 2023 Krushak Sikhya Sibir session “Natural Resources Management for Agricultural Resilience through Innovative Development” organized by the Dept. of Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment, Govt. of Odisha at Bhubaneswar, on Feb. 18, 2023. Great going!
Dr. Rijwana Parwin (Proj. Associate) presented her work "Assessing the Future Irrigation Water Demands at Watershed-scale for Maize Crop using Climate Change Projections" in the National Conference AGMET2022 at Coimbatore. Wonderful job Dr. Rijwana!
Akash Atnurkar (Proj. Assistant) presented his work on "Estimation of Soil Moisture using Satellite-based Vegetation Indices from Sentinel-2" in the National Conference AGMET2022 at Coimbatore. Congrats Akash!
Dr. Meenu Ramadas received the Institute Excellence in Teaching Award 2023 at IIT Bhubaneswar at the 15th Foundation Day held on Feb. 12, 2023. Keep up the good work!
JANUARY 2023
Daneti Arun Sourya (2021-2023 M. Tech. WRE student) presented his work "Estimating Reference Evapotranspiration based on Limited Hydrometeorological Data using Neural Network Models" in the National Conference LAI-2023 at Rourkela. Nice work Arun!
RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS
In the recent past, the MO WATER group has been able to expand their research into multiple paradigms of watershed hydrology, thanks to collaboration with international and national investigators, via sponsored research projects and academic exchange programmes (GIAN, SPARC, DAAD). At IIT Bhubaneswar, our team members have collaboration with faculty members from School of Earth Ocean and Climate Sciences (SEOCS) and School of Electrical Sciences (SES). Our team is also connected with domain experts and scientists from Oregon State University, Leibniz University Hannover, IIT Hyderabad, OUAT, ICAR-IIWM Bhubaneswar, ORSAC, SOA University, Centurion University and Saveetha University.
NEWS ARCHIVE
Dr. Meenu Ramadas delivered invited talk on "Applications of Probabilistic Models in Hydro-Meteorological Drought Monitoring & Frequency Analysis" in IISA 2022 Conference organized by the International Indian Statistical Association at IISc Bangalore, India during December 26-30, 2022.
Training session on “Understanding Climate Change and its Impacts on Water Resources” was conducted by Dr. Meenu Ramadas as part of Training on Roof Top Rainwater Harvesting Structure (RTRWHS) and WASH in Schools, for engineers of the School and Mass Education Dept., Govt. of Odisha, organized by Regional Resource Center (RRC) with support from UNICEF, at Bhubaneswar, during Sept. 26-30, 2022.
Dr. Meenu Ramadas presented the collaborative research work "Regional Hydro-meteorological Drought Characteristics using High Resolution Indian Monsoon Data Assimilation and Analysis (IMDAA) Datasets" in the 19th AOGS Annual Conference held on Aug. 03, 2022 (in virtual mode).
Ankita Manekar (Ph.D. Student) won Third Prize for Best Papers at the Roorkee Water Conclave 2022 held during March 02-04, 2022, for her work "Comparison of state-of-the-art regionalization techniques coupled with SWAT for predicting streamflow in ungauged watersheds in Eastern India" Hearty Congrats Ankita!
We successfully organized a training workshop “Data-driven and stakeholder centered adaptive management of food, energy, and water (FEW) nexus” at School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar during Feb. 28, 2022 – Mar. 04, 2022, under the ongoing SPARC-Ministry of Education (Govt. of India)-sponsored project. Virtual sessions by Dr. Meghna Babbar-Sebens & Dr. Jenna Tilt (Oregon State University), Mr. Suresh Marru (Indiana University) and Dr. Nagesh Kolagani (Centurion University) were attended by more than 25 participants from around the country.
Alok Kumar Samantaray defends his Ph.D. thesis on November 17, 2017, and is all set to accept a prestigious Post. Doc. position at NORCE, Norway. Super proud of you Alok!
Congratulations to Trupti Satapathy for securing admission at IISc Bangalore to pursue her doctoral research studies in Autumn 2021!
Trupti Satapathy (2019-2021 M. Tech. WRE student) got the opportunity to do a part of her Masters Thesis Project under Prof. Jörg Dietrich (Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany) by bagging the prestigious DAAD-KOSPIE scholarship grant in 2020. She stayed in Germany during Sept. 2020-March 2021 as part of her visit.
We successfully organized a workshop “From Knowledge to Action: A Vision for Resilient Rural India” at School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar during January 7-9, 2020, mentored by Prof. R Srinivasan (Texas A&M University, USA), Dr. Meghna Babbar-Sebens (Oregon State University), Dr. V Sridhar (Virginia Tech) and faculty experts from NIT Warangal and Centurion University, under the ongoing SPARC-Ministry of Education (Govt. of India)-sponsored project.
Dr. Meghna Babbar-Sebens and Dr. Jenna Tilt (Oregon State University) visited IIT Bhubaneswar on a short-term in Spring 2020 as part of the ongoing SPARC project. During this visit, they travelled to the EPP Village Panchayat study area with Dr. Nagesh Kolagani (Co-PI) and conducted stakeholder interaction discussions.
Dr. Meenu Ramadas attended the National Conference on Technical Empowerment of Women organized by NASI, held during March 8-9, 2018, at Vigyan Bhawan, Delhi