On January 28, at 4:00 pm, Khalid K. Osman will be speaking via zoom as part of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Seminar Series hosted by Carnegie Melon’s Engineering and Public Policy department.

Abstract: Historic decisions in the water sector were designed to limit access to certain groups of people with impacts that still loom today. In 2022, utilities generally do not consider inequities between spatially distributed community members—e.g., quantity and quality of levels of service, or infrastructure investments. This talk will explore the equity space in the planning, operations and management of water infrastructure
services through answering questions such as, “How are utilities measuring equity to ensure they are achieving their equity goals?”, “How do cities consider equity when implementing new water technology?”, and “Are there equity implications with regards to water utility communications during a protracted crisis?” Using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, this talk takes a look at how we can operationalize equity through
technical and policy approaches.

The Speaker: Khalid K. Osman is a PhD candidate in Sustainable Systems Engineering. Khalid is a 2019 Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellow and a Gates Millennium Scholar (class of 2011). His past works spans the use of mixed quantitative-qualitative methods to assess public perceptions of water infrastructure, water conservation efforts, and the management of existing infrastructure systems to meet the needs of those being served by the systems. His current work focuses on the operationalization of equity in water sector infrastructure, conceptualizing equity in decentralized water and sanitation systems, water affordability, and stakeholder-community engagement in sustainable civil infrastructure systems for achieving environmental justice. This coming fall, Osman will be joining Stanford as an Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering.

EPP’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) seminar series highlights community work, policy efforts, and cutting-edge research focused at the nexus between engineering and social justice. In short, these seminars highlight technical issues where the social details matter in practice, policy, and research.

Register for the seminar: https://tinyurl.com/EPPDEISeminarOsman