Sherri Cook

Sherri Cook, associate professor of environmental engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, will present “Developing and Applying Quantitative Sustainable Design Methodologies to Address Critical Water and Waste Treatment Challenges,” on May 21 at 7 p.m. in Bldg. 13-117.

Abstract:

There are global shortfalls in reliable access to safe water and sanitation; approximately 4.3 billion people live under water scarcity conditions at least one month of the year, and 3.6 billion people continuously lack access to safely managed sanitation. To address these societal challenges, my research group focuses on generating a foundation of data, understanding, and tools to help transform the treatment of, and access to, high quality water and sanitation without incurring unacceptable risks to human health, financial stability, and the environment. My group has three main research thrusts: (1) charting pathways for sustainable water and waste management systems by applying existing evaluation methodologies, in particular life cycle assessment (LCA), to existing and novel technologies to enable sustainable water treatment technology development and implementation; (2) advancing sustainability-based evaluations and engineering decisions by developing new methods and decision frameworks to promote universal and sustained sanitation; and (3) advancing environmental biotechnology applications by investigating novel biological process capabilities to enable safe water reuse.

To give examples of projects in these research areas, I will highlight the PhD dissertations of three alumni of your department. One focused on evaluating sustainable implementation of different drinking water treatment technologies, including ultraviolet disinfection and biological filtration. This work used extensive scenario and uncertainty analyses to provide data to help navigate the expansive landscape of technology development and implementation pathways. Two focused on improving sustainability assessment frameworks for sanitation. This included a focus on resource recovery from waste and culminated in the creation of a formal framework for including social considerations, and local context, in sanitation design and implementation processes. It is also included a focus on flooding disasters and impact on sustained sanitation access and established foundational knowledge on reconstruction and an integrated resilience and sustainability assessment approach. This research has provided the methodological foundation to evaluate complex and critical environmental engineering problems such as needing to implement potable water reuse amidst ubiquitous contamination by forever chemicals and increasing frequency and intensity of disaster events.