A professor of Hydrology at Imperial College in London, UK, has been awarded the Prince Sultan International Water Prize for 2004-6 for his work in studying integrated and sustainable management of water resources. Prize recipient Professor Howard Wheater has been working for 25 years to improve the understanding of the hydrology of these arid and semi-arid areas.
Wheater has sought to develop suitable modelling tools for management that can then be applied to improved water resources management, and then disseminated state-of-the-art information to students and practitioners. This has particular application in arid and semi-arid areas, which brought him particular favour with the Prince Sultan Prize, which rewards research to improve water resources in these regions.
Wheater’s latest endeavour, in June 2007, was to organise an International Workshop on Groundwater Modelling for Arid and Semi-Arid Areas in Lanzhou, China. The Lanzhou workshop brings together the world’s leading experts and an invited set of participants from the world’s arid regions, to provide information on state-of-the-art groundwater methods and modelling tools, and to provide training material and case studies.
At Imperial College, Wheater oversees two research students, one looking at surface water resources in Oman and the other at issues to do with climate change in Iran.
Prof. Wheater has also worked in Saudi Arabia, where he participated in the Five Wadis Representative Basins study in the late 1980s, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Arizona.
The Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water is intended to reward the efforts undertaken by innovative scholars and scientists as well as related organizations in the realm of water resources worldwide. It has been established to acknowledge the special achievements that have contributed to the development of scientific solutions to solve the problems associated with the provision as well as the preservation of adequate and sustainable water resources, particularly in arid regions.
Source: Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Int’ Prize for Water
