Drought Interfaces

About

The Wright-Ingraham Institute invited us to propose a tool for drought in the Colorado River Basin. Treating the problem through the lens of domain-driven design, research into complex natural forces and political interests that shapes water in the region -- legal, economic, cultural, and ecological -- disparate systems were unpacked and integrated into a model demonstrating how water has been shaped through the confluence of natural forces and political interests.

The problem approached water scarcity by thoughtfully considering the process of abstraction. As different stakeholders were interviewed to enrich the domain understanding of the problem, the meaning behind water scarcity shifted with the their time horizons of interests: while water scarcity was conceived as an intermittent problem of drought to users, frequent droughts were part of an ongoing pattern of aridification and consequence of climate change to experts. By normalizing both the underlying data and its interpretative positions, the tool became piece of socio-technical infrastructure representative of the socio-technical problem of water scarcity, accounting rigorously for existing historical and existing conditions to construct a surface for testing different scenarios for allocating of water and water rights across the seven states who must collaborate in its management.

‍

Role

I led research and concepting for the project. Through the development of a research plan with mixed historical, systems, user, and data design research methods, I facilitated conversations with collaborators through dynamic prototyping and continuously checked viability by sourcing and processing geospatial and dam data. I conducted literature reviews on the basin and water budgeting to as well as semi-structured interviews with municipal city planners, a federal Bureau of Reclamation director, lawyers, farmers, and subject matter experts / academics to enrich the conceptual development of the interface.

‍

Collaborator

The Wright-Ingraham Institute

Starting with the paper written by The Wright-Ingraham Institute's research arm, StudyTank, as a driver, the domain of drought was initially conceived as the difference between allocated and actual water availability in the region.

The paper itself was an analysis of the insufficiencies of Colorado River Compact for water management.

These two documents and its positions undergirded the production of the interface.

While the Colorado River Compact described the legal allocation of water rights, the StudyTank paper lays out the disparity between actual and allocated water. These two parts needed to be understood in detail to develop appropriate abstractions.

For actual water, research into water budgeting was conducted to its calculation. While papers described the rather simple equation, terms were analyzed for interpretability and decomposed further in cases of ambiguity. Additional research was done to map out all the different forms that water could in this system.

GAN Patterns

Simplifying the network into patterns of beginning (input to hidden), middle (hidden to hidden), and end (hidden to output) to identify functions.

GAN Parts

Defining common part across patterns.

Matrix Transformation Diagrams

Visualizing the matrix transformations.