Researchers pioneer new water management model to help avert drought crises

To see the future, look at Chile. The South American country is grappling with a challenge many other regions will face before long: how to secure water for a growing population as extreme droughts become more frequent and severe. A team of Stanford researchers is bridging the gap between short-term drought management and long-term climate adaptation, equipping decision-makers with the tools to navigate an uncertain tomorrow. The approach involves a computational model that updates drought indicators based on changing conditions, ensuring more timely actions and policies to avert drought’s worst impacts.

“There’s a disconnect between short-term drought management and long-term climate change,” said project principal investigator Sarah Fletcher, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Stanford School of Engineering and a center fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “We are developing a model for future water management strategies worldwide.”

The project, which received early funding through the Woods Institute’s Environmental Venture Projects program, focuses on drought indicators – key measurements like precipitation and streamflow that reveal drought severity. These indicators evolve over time, but water management strategies often fail to keep pace.

For example, melt from glaciers in Chile’s Maipo River Basin in Chile can help buffer against droughts in the short term by providing a consistent water supply during periods of low precipitation. However, depending on how the climate changes over the century, glacier melt may become depleted as glaciers retreat, resulting in worse drought impacts. If decision-makers continue using outdated streamflow-based drought indicators, they may not anticipate earlier water shortages.

The Stanford-led team is developing a model that can signal if it makes sense to reprioritize which drought indicators – such as those related to glacial runoff instead of precipitation – to monitor. This allows for more adaptive approaches that consider the changing nature of drought, and better ensure water system resilience.

Keani Willebrand, a PhD student in Fletcher’s lab, leads much of the project’s computational modeling. Willebrand’s research seeks to develop a framework not just for Chile but for river basins worldwide, ensuring that drought indicators remain relevant as environmental conditions change.

“I’m particularly excited by the question of what information is most valuable to us today versus what will be crucial in the future,” Willebrand said. “How can we take these changes into account proactively in our planning?”

View of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, showcasing the city’s sprawl and the Mapocho River, a tributary of the Maipo River, which supplies approximately 80% of the city’s freshwater. | Keani Wilebrand

Alexandra Konings, an associate professor of Earth system science, provides the team with expertise in remote sensing to refine drought indicators, such as snow melt changes and glacier melt changes. Bruce Cain, a political science professor, highlights the institutional challenges of adaptive drought planning in Chile and elsewhere.

“We want to integrate all of the very different data pieces available into a single computational model that we can use to evaluate different drought management strategies going forward,” said Fletcher. “This is the real crux of the challenge."

The Stanford team is working alongside Chilean hydrologists Sebastian Vicuña and Jorge Gironas and economist Oscar Melo, who are developing a new drought monitoring platform and revising Chile’s water code. The collaboration is particularly relevant for the Maipo River Basin, which supplies approximately 70% of drinking water and 90% of irrigation water to the country’s capital, Santiago. The city of nearly 7 million residents has endured 15 consecutive years of drought.

“The water crisis in Chile requires urgent action, and our partnership with Stanford is helping us rethink how we manage water under these extreme conditions,” said Vicuña. “By integrating new data and governance strategies, we can create more adaptable policies.”