- Time for the New Dry Season Forecast 2020-21 is Available (Click on the Banner to Access the Forecast)!
- On Wednesday, October 21, PIRE students Kristen and Genevieve will serve as panelists at UConn's annual Research Connection event (https://fyp.uconn.edu/researchconnections/)
- To read the full news, click on the image!
- Water and Food Security PIRE project covers a broad range of actions and connects different disciplines through state-of-the-art research.
- Students from UConn had an exciting experience in the summer 2019 field visit to Ethiopia.
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
Updates from the field in Ethiopia: Social science research in the time of COVID
Recently, UConn PhD students, Ezana Atsbeha and Selam Negatu, returned from Ethiopia after lengthy ethnographic data collection. Here are some highlig . . .
Published: Nov 01, 2020
Research Amidst Covid-19: How NSF-PIRE Students Are Coping
In March 2020, the Water & Food Security PIRE was in its fourth year developing and communicating seasonal forecasts with our communities in Ethio . . .
Published: Jul 11, 2020
Interview with Sarah Alexander and Ezana Atsbeha
As we have emerged into the third year of the project, with two wet season and a dry season forecast, UConn Sociology graduate student, Faith Curry, h . . .
Published: Jun 06, 2020
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:Â 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