James A. Smith

About

James A. Smith is the Henry L. Kinnier Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Virginia's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on sustainable point-of-use water treatment technologies for the developing world, including the development of household-level water-treatment devices that improve water quality and human health. He has made significant contributions to the field through the invention of the MadiDrop+, a silver-embedded porous ceramic tablet for household water purification, and is the founder of Silivhere Technologies, Inc., which produces and sells MadiDrops+ globally. Dr. Smith holds a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Princeton University. His professional background includes work as a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He has held visiting professorships at Stanford University and Princeton University and has received numerous awards for his teaching and research, including the Fulbright Research Fellowship, the AEESP/McGraw Hill Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Wesley W. Horner Award. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the founder of PureMadi, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing global water and health issues. His research interests encompass nanomaterials, environmental engineering, water resources, and low-impact stormwater management, with a particular emphasis on the impact of water treatment…

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Geology
• Climatology
• Geography
• Atmospheric sciences
• Meteorology
• Physical geography
• Chemistry
• Botany
• Oceanography

Selected publications

• Assessing Compound Flooding From Landfalling Tropical Cyclones on the North Carolina Coast

  Water Resources Research · 2020 · 173 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Tropical cyclone (TC) events are major drivers of compound flooding due to the interaction of wind‐driven storm surge and TC rainfall. Traditionally, coastal flood risk models have only taken into account surge flooding, even though it is known that the role of rainfall‐runoff is critical. There is limited understanding about the types of TC events that are capable of producing significant compounding and how site conditions at the coast affect the extent to which storm surge and rainfa…

  DOI

• Urban development pattern’s influence on extreme rainfall occurrences

  Nature Communications · 2024-05-11 · 88 citations

  articleOpen access

  Growing urban population and the distinct strategies to accommodate them lead to diverse urban development patterns worldwide. While local evidence suggests the presence of urban signatures in rainfall anomalies, there is limited understanding of how rainfall responds to divergent urban development patterns worldwide. Here we unveil a divergence in the exposure to extreme rainfall for 1790 inland cities globally, attributable to their respective urban development patterns. Cities that experience…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Flood frequency estimation and uncertainty in arid/semi-arid regions

  Journal of Hydrology · 2020 · 61 citations

  DOI

• Evaluation of a Physics-Based Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Model for Risk Assessment

  Journal of Hydrometeorology · 2020 · 57 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Heavy rainfall generated by landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) can cause extreme flooding. A physics-based TC rainfall model (TCRM) has been developed and coupled with a TC climatology model to study TC rainfall climatology. In this study, we evaluate TCRM with rainfall observations made by satellite (of North Atlantic TCs from 1999 to 2018) and radar (of 36 U.S. landfalling TCs); we also examine the influence on the rainfall estimation of the key input to TCRM—the wind profile. We fou…

  DOI

• Direct partitioning of eddy-covariance water and carbon dioxide fluxes into ground and plant components

  Agricultural and Forest Meteorology · 2022 · 55 citations

  The partitioning of evapotranspiration (ET) into surface evaporation (E) and stomatal-based transpiration (T) is essential for analyzing the water cycle and earth surface energy budget. Similarly, the partitioning of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon dioxide into respiration (R) and photosynthesis (P) is needed to quantify the controls on its sources and sinks. Promising approaches to obtain these components from field measurements include partitioning models based on analysis of convention…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NSF/EAR-BSF - Extreme Floods in Arid/Semi-Arid Watersheds: Paired Studies in Israel and the US

  NSF · $296k · 2016–2020

• Collaborative Research: Small-Scale Variability of Rainfall: Experimental Studies

  NSF · $167k · 2004–2007

• SGER: Hydrometeorological Studies of the 2008 Flooding in Iowa

  NSF · $74k · 2008–2010

Frequent coauthors

• Mary Lynn Baeck

  Princeton University

  93 shared

• Joshua Benton

  Texas A&M University

  67 shared

• Gabriele Villarini

  Princeton University

  58 shared

• Witold F. Krajewski

  University of Iowa

  53 shared

• Long Yang

  Nanjing University

  34 shared

• A. Allen Bradley

  32 shared

• Gabriel A. Vecchi

  Princeton University

  29 shared

• Brian R. Nelson

  NOAA National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service

  28 shared

Labs

• James A. Smith LabPI

Education

• B.S.

  University of Virginia

• M.S.

  University of Virginia

Awards & honors

• Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2022…
• Wesley W. Horner Award for best paper of the year in an ASCE…
• Fulbright Research Fellow (2017)
• Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year Award (2015)
• Diplomate, American Academy of Water Resources (2014)

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Larry Bandh-72
• James H. Lamberth-47
• Jonathan L. Goodallh-44