Urban & Water Thematic Group event
Speaker: Hassaan F. Khan
Moderator : Gustavo Saltiel, Urban and Urban TG Chair
Speaker’s Bio: Hassaan F. Khan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. His teaching and research focus on issues of environmental justice and equity, combining rigorous systems analysis with mixed methods approaches, to study water management in the global south. He is the Founding Director of an interdisciplinary research group (KWP) that is developing technological and policy-based solutions to urban water challenges in South Asian cities. Dr Khan aims to shift water discourse away from centralized, infrastructure-heavy approaches that neglect marginalized communities. His parallel research involves integrating hydrologic and socioeconomic models to support water management decisions at various scales—from transboundary river basins (like the Mekong, Niger, Indus, and Kabul) to urban systems (such as San Francisco, Pune, Karachi, and Amman). He has collaborated with organizations including the World Bank, USAID, IWMI, and Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission.
Before Tufts, Dr Khan taught at Habib University in Karachi and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford. He holds a Ph.D. in Water Resources Engineering from UMass Amherst and a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Lafayette College.
Synopsis: Across much of the Global South, urban water utilities struggle with two linked challenges: chronic financial shortfalls and inequities in household water costs. In this talk, I present findings from a new study that uses household survey data and property records from Karachi, Pakistan, to test alternative pricing and reform strategies in largely unmetered water systems. The study combines regression modeling with simulation analyses to explore how reforms such as improved bill distribution, property-value–indexed tariffs, and targeted service improvements could both strengthen utility revenues and ease the burden on poorer households. By highlighting these “second-best” strategies, the talk points to practical, more just pathways for water utilities to move toward financial sustainability and distributional equity in challenging contexts.
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In-Person (MC 1 – 860)
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