Context
Government of India spends $6 billion annually on rural development projects.
Local rural governments are given autonomy to choose from a list of 266 approved activities. However, being technically complex, water conservation and natural resource management projects are often not prioritized.
As a result, despite significant overall expenditure, there is limited investment on natural resource management.
Classified the full list of 266 activities into 3 categories. Identified 15 unique structures that were linked to water resource management across 50+ activities.
Built a suitability index for each of the 15 structures using hydrogeological modeling, land-use, rainfall, soil type and other datasets.
Developed an optimization framework that computes the most suitable water conservation structures for each district.
