UCOWR is proud to announce that the 1997 Warren A. Hall Award recipient is Yacov Y. Haimes of the University of Virginia. Dr. Haimes received his Medal at the 1997 UCOWR Annual Meeting in Keystone, Colorado on July 1. Duane Baumann, UCOWR Executive Director, and Betty Hall, wife of Warren Hall, made the Medal presentation. Yacov Y. Haimes
Yacov Y. Haimes has made substantial contributions to the planning, management, and operation of water resources systems through his pioneering work on the theory and methodology of systems engineering and risk management. His numerous publications and editorial efforts, and his work with federal and state agencies have strongly influenced the practice of water resources systems engineering.
Dr. Haimes earned his B.S. degree in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry from the Hebrew University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Systems Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Registered Professional Engineer, and a Registered Professional Hydrologist (Ground Water). He holds the Lawrence R. Quarles professorship in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia and is a member of the Systems Engineering and Civil Engineering faculties. On the faculty of Case Western Reserve University for 17 years, he was Chair of the Systems Engineering Department, Director of its water resources graduate program, and Director of the school-wide Center for Large-Scale Systems and Policy Analysis.
Dr. Haimes' association with UCOWR can be traced to 1965 when he attended his first UCOWR meeting. Ever since, attending these meetings has been a high priority for him; he has missed only a few of them during the last 30 years.
He served from 1972-1987 as the lead delegate to UCOWR from Case Western Reserve University and as the University of Virginia's lead delegate to UCOWR since 1987. During these two periods, he served on most UCOWR committees and chaired some. He served for six years on the UCOWR Board of Directors (1979-1985), as Vice President (1983-1984), and as president of the Board (1984-1985). Dr. Haimes is the recipient of the UCOWR Public Service Award (1991).
In addition, Dr. Haimes hosted the 1992 UCOWR Annual Meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia
Warren A. Hall and Yacov. Y. Haimes first met at the UCLA Water Resources Center during the summer of 1965. Since then and until Dr. Hall's death, they had a close personal friendship and productive professional relationship. At UCLA, Dr. Hall served on Yacov Haimes' Ph.D. dissertation committee; as a member of the Water Resources Center, Haimes worked with Hall and others on the California Water Project. In 1968, Hall, Dracup, and Haimes conducted the first two week short- course on water resources systems engineering. While still a student at UCLA, Haimes published two papers in Water Resources Research with Warren Hall and Bill Butcher. After Haimes graduated from UCLA, he and Hall continued their professional collaboration:
- Chaired the 20th UCOWR Annual Conference: "Educational Prerequisites for Water Resources Management," Baton Rouge, Louisiana, July 19-21, 1984.
- Organized and chaired seven UCOWR-initiated and sponsored Engineering Foundation Conferences on "Risk-Based Decisionmaking in Water Resources." The eighth one is scheduled for October 1997.
- Organized and co-chaired the following UCOWR initiated and sponsored Engineering Foundation conferences:
- "Multiobjective Analysis in Water Resources" with David Allee, Santa Barbara, Nov. 14-19, 1982.
- "Ground Water Contamination" with Herbert Snyder, Santa Barbara, Nov. 11-16, 1984.
- "The Role of the Social and Behavioral Sciences in Water Resources Planning and Management" with Duane Baumann, Santa Barbara, May 3-8, 1997.
- They jointly lectured for 20 years (until Dr. Hall's death) in the Annual Short Course on Water Resources Planning and Management.
- They developed the Surrogate Worth Trade-off (SWT) method for the optimization of multiple objective functions.
- They published (with Herbert Freedman) their book on the Surrogate Worth Trade-off Method.
- They published their work on the Uncertainty Sensitivity Index-method.
- They collaborated on various projects and short course, including the "India Project."
- To this day, the influence of Warren A. Hall is clearly evident in all of Yacov Haimes' work.