Dr. Bruce Hooper

Associate Professor Bruce Hooper (Southern Illinois University) was the first UCOWR Water Studies Fellow at IWR. He has extensive research, consulting and teaching experience in policy and program development in water resources management, information exchange in catchment management and floodplain management. Dr Hooper holds a PhD in Geography and Masters of Natural Resources degrees from the University of New England, Australia.

He has advised Australian and Indian governments on institutional strengthening and capacity building in water resources management and integrated catchment management. He played a key role in identifying institutional arrangements for local government to address the Sydney Water Crisis of 1998, developed a Toolbox of water policy instruments with the Global Water Partnership in 2001 and has received national awards for his work in floodplain management policy and performance indicators.

Hooper’s research projects have resulted in the development of a prototype information exchange program for watershed management (winning a Land and Water Australian Innovation Award), and policy recommendations for integrated floodplain management and improved adoption of salinity management in the Murray-Darling Basin.

He is currently developing river basin organization performance indicators to self-assess their ability to implement integrated water resources management. In 2005 he published Integrated River Basin Governance, Learning from International Experiences (IWA Publications, London) and is the author of two other co-edited books on water allocation for the environment and transferability of water entitlements.

He has published several peer-reviewed articles and over eighty research and consultancy reports and professional articles. In his research career he has personally won over $1.3m of research funding. He is a member of the International Water Resources Association and the American Water Resources Association and is the past editor of Water International, published by IWRA. Dr Hooper is a permanent American resident, water resources researcher and teacher, based in Carbondale, Illinois.

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