Project Overview
How do relationships between scientists, farmers, water managers, and authorities influence the production, dissemination, and outcome of new scientific knowledge? This project establishes an international research and education partnership to promote a political-institutional model of science that links sociological and engineering methods in a people-centered approach to the human-climate-water-agriculture-energy nexus in the Blue Nile basin (BNB), Ethiopia.
The project is a multi-year collaborative endeavor that will run from 2016 to 2021. By the end of the project, the research team will have crafted state-of-the-art tools to help smallholder farmers make practical decisions about water, crops, and fertilizers and ultimately gain more secure access to food and water in the face of increasingly challenging climatic extremes.
Curious to see this year’s forecast? [CLICK HERE!]
Project Goals
The UConn PIRE project brings people and resources together across disciplinary, cultural, and geographical boundaries to promote knowledge-driven and rights-based interventions that enhance food and water security in vulnerable settings. We promote a political-institutional model of science that links sociological and engineering methods for a people-centered approach. Our political-institutional approach integrates graduate and undergraduate education, professional training, and community outreach into the research program to develop the human capital and social connections between all stakeholders—scientists, farmers, policymakers and students in the United States and in Ethiopia. The project achieves its objectives through:
Provision of superior quality seasonal forecast information at a scale relevant to local farmers and water resource managers — Learn More
Identifying political-institutional barriers that influence the uptake of new forecast information — Learn More
Training a new generation of global expert that constitute competitive international workforce — Learn More
PIRE News
Fahad Khan Khadim, UConn CEE PhD student, on his field trip in summer 2019 to Koga irrigation area, Ethiopia.Fahad Khan Khadim, a final year PhD stude . . .
Published: Feb 27, 2022
PIRE Impact Day – A Collaboration Between Bahir Dar Institute of Technology and UConn
Ethiopian high school students have been an integral part of the Water and Food Security PIRE project’s Citizen Science Initiative for severa . . .
Published: Aug 10, 2021
Graduation of Meijian Yang – the crop yield modeler from the PIRE team
After having a break due to the pandemic in 2020, UConn organized its in-person commencement On May 8th, 2021, where Meijian Yang, a UConn Environment . . .
Published: May 17, 2021
Contact us
Prof. Emmanouil Anagnostou
Principal Investigator, Water and Food Security PIRE
Director, Eversource Energy Center
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Connecticut
Email: manos@uconn.edu
Kristen Kirksey
Project Manager, Water and Food Security PIRE
Graduate Research Assistant
Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut
Email: kristen.kirksey@uconn.edu