Dr. ir. David Gold

Assistant Professor
Geographical Hydrology

Research focus: Quantitative modeling of human interactions with water resources systems

David Gold is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Geography at Utrecht University. David's research applies computational tools such as multiobjective optimization, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence to solve global water scarcity challenges. David received his PhD from Cornell University in 2022 under the supervision of Patrick Reed. His PhD dissertation, which developed new methods to support infrastructure adaptation in urban water supply systems, was awarded the 2023 Outstanding Dissertation Award in Natural Science and Engineering from the Universities Council on Water Resources, given to one dissertation in the United States annually. David's current research projects include modeling drought vulnerability in the Colorado River Basin, using interactive visual analytics to support climate adaptation pathways, operationalizing equity in water supply planning in Brazil's Federal District, and exploring the potential for Direct Potable Water reuse in urban water systems. 

Research highlights

Exploring Drought Vulnerability in the Colorado River Basin

The Colorado River is a critical water source for the American Southwest, supporting a population of 40 million and an agricultural industry worth nearly $5 billion annually. The region faces unprecedented challenges from drought, climate change, and competing water demands. In 2021, widespread and persistent drought caused Lake Powell, the United States' second largest reservoir, to hit record low storage levels, prompting the US Federal Government to declare the first-ever water shortage in the Upper Colorado River Basin and forcing significant cuts for water users across multiple states. This project explores the multisectoral drought vulnerability of Colorado's West Slope Basins, six watersheds within the Colorado River Basin on the Western side of the continental divide, which constitute critical headwaters of the Colorado River. This project explores the multisectoral drought vulnerability of Colorado's West Slope Basins, six watersheds within the Colorado River Basin on the Western side of the continental divide, which constitute critical headwaters of the Colorado River. Our project team is developing new frameworks to explore uncertainty stemming from climate change and evolving human water to quantify regional drought vulnerability and identify strategies for sustainable water management. This project is a collaboration with researchers from Cornell University. 

Visual analytics to support climate adaptation pathways

This project is a collaboration with Angelos Chatzimparmpas of the Information and Computer Science department. Funded by a Pathways to Sustainability Seed Grant from Utrecht University, our team is developing a generalizable framework that uses Visual Analytics (VA) and eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) to facilitate the creation of multisectoral climate adaptation pathways. Our framework helps decision-makers develop robust adaptation strategies that avoid costly “lock-ins" by creating strategic visions for the future, committing to minimum regret short-term actions, and discovering adaptation tipping points to guide future decisions. 

Global potential for direct potable water reuse to alleviate water scarcity

Roughly two billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. In water scarcity hotspots around the globe, non-renewable groundwater storage is being depleted, and surface water resources are overallocated. This has led to an unsustainable situation where there is a large water gap between the demand and availability of freshwater. Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) - introducing highly purified wastewater into urban water supply systems - is one promising solution strategy to reduce this water gap in urban areas. This project explores the potential of DPR systems to mitigate water scarcity at global, national, and regional scales.

As part of the National Geographic Society - World Water Map project, our team is working with an international group of researchers from the Joint Global Change Research Institute. Our work uses the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) to measure the multisector implications of DPR under a range of socioeconomic and climate change scenarios. The results highlight the impact of DPR on the energy, urban, and agricultural sectors and map regional teleconnections resulting from DPR investments.

 

Selected Publications

Gold, D. F., Gupta, R. S., & Reed, P. M. (2024). Exploring the spatially compounding multi‐sectoral drought vulnerabilities in Colorado's West Slope River Basins. Earth's Future, 12(11), e2024EF004841.
 

Gold, D. F., Reed, P. M., Gorelick, D. E., & Characklis, G. W. (2023). Advancing regional water supply management and infrastructure investment pathways that are equitable, robust, adaptive, and cooperatively stable. Water Resources Research, 59(9), e2022WR033671.

Gold, D. F., Reed, P. M., Gorelick, D. E., & Characklis, G. W. (2022). Power and pathways: Exploring robustness, cooperative stability, and power relationships in regional infrastructure investment and water supply management portfolio pathways. Earth's Future, 10(2), e2021EF002472.

Gold, D. F., Reed, P. M., Trindade, B. C., & Characklis, G. W. (2019). Identifying actionable compromises: Navigating multi-city robustness conflicts to discover cooperative safe operating spaces for regional water supply portfolios. Water Resources Research, 55(11), 9024-9050.

Trindade, B. C., Gold, D. F., Reed, P. M., Zeff, H. B., & Characklis, G. W. (2020). Water pathways: An open source stochastic simulation system for integrated water supply portfolio management and infrastructure investment planning. Environmental Modelling & Software, 132, 104772.

Hadjimichael, A., Gold, D., Hadka, D., & Reed, P. (2020). Rhodium: Python library for many-objective robust decision making and exploratory modeling. Journal of Open Research Software, 8.