About

I am an Associate Professor of Water & Control at at Delft University of Technology . My research interests are mainly in the application of mathematical optimisation, control and systems theory to advance water management, energy systems and environmental engineering and their nexuses with agricultural systems. Some of my research deals with predictive control of pumped open canal systems, operational optimisation of multipurpose cascade reservoirs, optimisation and control for irrigation and water allocation, optimisation of cropping patterns and infrastructure assessment - some of this within the context of the water-energy-food nexus. My urban water research deals with optimal control and fault diagnosis for drinking water distribution networks, and the urban nexus of heating systems, and energy transitions.

News and Events

December 2023 – New paper on ‘Commoning practices’ for Energy Justice -»‘Commoning practices’ for energy justice? Perspectives on the heat transition in the city of Amsterdam..
October 2023 – New paper on modelling microbial selection dynamics for purple bacteria -»A novel mechanistic modelling approach for microbial selection dynamics: Towards improved design and control of raceway reactors for purple bacteria.
August 2023 – New Nature Scientific Reports paper on Bayesian approaches for mapping disaggregated geographic inequalities in water access -»Enhancing water access monitoring through mapping multi-source usage and disaggregated geographic inequalities with machine learning and surveys.
January, 2023 – New Stories of Science interview article was published about my work on the EPIC Africa EU project and related research-»Balancing water, food and energy to drive sustainable development.
November 21, 2022 – New Project EPIC Africa has kicked off. Super excited to coordinate this project funded by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme -»EPIC Afric develops operationally verifiable water-energy-food models for long-term energy infrastructure planning, considering climate impacts and multi-sectoral transition management with stakeholders..
November 2022 – New Applied Energy paper on reducing committed emissions from heating demand from the built environment of Amsterdam -»Reducing committed emissions of heating towards 2050: Analysis of scenarios for the insulation of buildings and the decarbonisation of electricity generation.
November 2022 – Nature Energy perspectives paper on the need for context-relevant evidence to shape Africa’s clean energy future. -»Africa needs context-relevant evidence to shape its clean energy future.
October, 2022 – New PhD researcher Fatima Ezzahra Riakhi joins my research group, to work on irrigation and drainage system adaptations and operational water management in agricultural polder networks! Welcome Fatima!
October, 2022 – New PhD researcher Rania Al-Zou’bi joins my research group, to work on energy planning in the WEF-Policy nexus! Welcome Rania!
August 2022 – New Paper on Active Leakage Diagnosis for Water Distribution Networks.
-»A Bayesian Approach for Active Fault Isolation with an Application to Leakage Localization in Water Distribution Networks.
June 2022 – New Paper on MPC for multi-market DR participation.
-»Multi-market Demand Response from pump-controlled open canal systems: an economic MPC approach to pump scheduling.
June 2022 – New Paper a collaborative community synthesis on the direction of WEF nexus research.
-»Emerging themes and future directions of multi-sector nexus research and implementation.
May 2022 – News Happy to be selected #2 best Teacher of the Year (2021-2022) for Water Management..
January 2022 – New Paper on Model Predictive Control of Salinity and Water Levels in Canal Networks.
-»Nonlinear model predictive control of salinity and water level in polder networks: Case study of Lissertocht catchment.
January 29, 2022 – Panel Discussion Invited participation in the Webinar GERD and beyond: The water-food-energy nexus. Enlarging the envelope of cooperative scenarios in the Eastern Nile Basin through Infrastructure Planning & Operations in a WEF Nexus Context.
November 2021 – New Paper on Leak Detection and Localization in Water Distribution.
-»Pressure-Leak Duality for Leak Detection and Localization in Water Distribution Systems.
October 21, 2021 – Invited Lecture Gave the opening lecture of the IDEA League WEFE-Nexus school, together with my colleague Dr Zarrar Khan of PNNL.
September, 2021 – New PhD researcher Alireza Shefaei joins my research group, working with me on long term planning of water supply under uncertainty! Welcome Alireza!
August 2021 – New Paper on Electricity Price Forecasting in Day Ahead Markets using DNNs.
-»Electricity Price Forecasting in European Day Ahead Markets: A Greedy Consideration of Market Integration .
July 2021 – New Paper on MPC based planning of multi-reservoir systems in transboundary basins.
-»Operational planning of WEF infrastructure: quantifying the value of information sharing and cooperation in the Eastern Nile basin.
June 2021 – New Paper on clustering of water use type by socio-economic factors.
-»Dynamic Time Warping Clustering to Discover Socioeconomic Characteristics in Smart Water Meter Data.
May 2021 – New Paper on Water-Energy Models for Assessing energy transitions.
-»The water use of heating pathways to 2050: analysis of national and urban energy scenarios.
September 2020 – New Paper on Optimal Control of Precision Irrigation and Water Allocation through convex agrohydrological models and mixed integer programming.
-»Optimal Control for Precision Irrigation of a Large-Scale Plantation.
September 15, 2020 – New RA Jeroen Verhagen joins my research group, working with me on transboundary river basins and reservoir coordination in the WEF nexus framework. Welcome Jeroen!

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Short Bio

Before joining TU Delft, I was a Research Associate at the Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Group of Imperial College London. I have a PhD in Control Engineering (Aeronautics) and a first class honours MEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. I received both the MEng and PhD degrees from Imperial College London, UK, in 2008 and 2013, respectively. I currently serve as an associate editor of the Springer journal Energy Systems and the Journal of Hydroinformatics.

For more information on my ongoing research, see my research and projects and download publications

Contact Me

Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences Department Water Management
Stevinweg 1, 2628 CN Delft, the Netherlands
e.abraham[at]tudelft.nl