Looking Into Data
Hi everyone! My ASU Seminar from last week went well. We had a guest speaker, Nathan Miller from Matrix New World Engineering, present on groundwater modeling for water resources management in Arizona. He talked about groundwater flow models, Arizona water policy, and if Arizona is running out of water. After this seminar, I gave Dr. Garcia an update on where I was with background readings, R Studio, and finding public water utility meetings. Then, we decided to put RStudio and background readings on the back burner until I can eventually meet with the graduate students working on her project to get help with programming and modeling.
Following these initial discussions, we moved on to talking about how to look into the data on the 3 cities. I will be looking into data from Dr. Garcia’s previous works and other previous studies as well. Dr. Garcia recommended starting with comparing the following characteristics of the 3 cities: hydrology and climate, water supply infrastructure, structure of the utility, and characteristics of the community. This means looking at aridity percentages, public vs private ownership of water utilities, evolution of water policy, number of water treatment plants, population growth, partisan voting index, and much more. I’m slowly sifting through the data, as there is a large amount of available data just from Dr. Garcia’s previous projects.
Then, on Friday last week, I sat in on the monthly CNH2 project team meeting. I was introduced to the team and was able to see how a research paper comes together. After being on the side of reading papers for school, it was quite interesting and valuable to see how different perspectives come together and how empirical data is translated into a narrative that makes sense to a broader audience.
As for this week, I had the senior trip for the first half of the week. For the second half of the week, I hope to continue sifting through the data and categorizing where it falls. Additionally, I have a virtual meeting with Dr. Garcia and a separate in person meeting with Ms. Wendy Sandor, my faculty mentor, to update both of them on where I stand currently with my project. Thanks for reading!
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