Climate-Smart Water Resource Management: A Paradigm Shift from Ancient to Modern Practices with Integrated Technologies

• Defines climate-smart water management (CSWM) and its core principles: resilience, efficiency, adaptability, and sustainability.
• Emphasizes a shift from traditional, siloed approaches to integrated, systems-based thinking.
• Combines hydrology, hydraulics, ecology, economics, governance, and social sciences.

Prof. (Dr.) Rajib Maity is a professor and AK Singh Chair faculty in the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur), India. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, UK. He is currently heading the School of Water Resources at IIT Kharagpur as the Chairperson of the school. His research areas include Hydroclimatology, Climate Change Impact on Water Resources, Stochastic Hydrology, Analysis of Hydroclimatic Extremes, Hydrologic Time Series Analyses and Forecasting, Sea Level Rise, Remote Sensing Applications in Hydrology, and AI/ML applications in Hydroclimatology. Apart from AK Singh Chair Faculty and Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, his other professional recognitions include Humboldt Fellowship (Experienced Researchers, Germany), James Rennell MoES Young Fellow (MoES, GoI) Faculty Excellence Award (IIT Kharagpur), Prof. R. J. Garde Research Award (ISH, India), Emerging Leaders Fellowship (Australia), BOYSCAST Fellowship, IEI Young Engineers Award, DAAD Fellowship (Germany), International ICE WaRM Fellowship (Australia), and Prof. N. S. Govinda Rao Memorial Medal from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Prof. Maity has published two books and more than 235 research articles in different peer reviewed journals and conferences and chapters in books. Prof. Maity also serves as Guest Editor and Associate Editor of several international journals, including Journal of Hydrology (Elsevier), Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio Journal), Journal of Hydrologic Engineering (ASCE), etc. For recent updates, please visit https://facweb.iitkgp.ac.in/~rajibmaity/.

Dr. Aman Srivastava is currently an Institute Post‑Doctoral Fellow (IPDF) at the Public Policy and Economics Division of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. Previously, he served as a Post‑Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Ocean Engineering, IIT Madras, and as a Project Scientist at the Centre for Circularity (CRRET), IIT Madras. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, as a Prime Minister’s Research Fellow (PMRF). His doctoral research pioneered a fifth classification of drought―Environmental Drought―and developed a first‑of‑its‑kind Environmental Drought Index (EDI) published in the prestigious Journal of Hydrology. Dr. Srivastava also holds a Master’s degree (M. Tech.) from the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA) at IIT Bombay, where he graduated as the overall topper and received the Institute Medal Award from Nobel Laureate Prof. Duncan Haldane. His research interests span climate change adaptation and mitigation, water resources engineering and management, and public policy and governance, with a publication record comprising several journal articles, patent, book chapters, and international conference papers. His professional experience includes serving as a Research Associate with the Ministry of Rural Development, a Research in Development Fellow with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), and a Visiting Faculty member in Civil Engineering at Government College of Engineering, Nagpur (India).