About

Dr. Wendy Jepson holds a University Professorship in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University. She has been on faculty since earning her Ph.D. in Geography from UCLA in 2003. She is the Director of the Environment and Sustainability Initiative and Environmental Programs in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research addresses contemporary debates in human-environment interactions, water security, and environmental governance. She is the Editor-in-Chief for Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews-Water (WIRES Water), a highly ranked review journal for interdisciplinary water research. Dr. Jepson leads several research projects and institutional initiatives on water insecurity, generating over $9 million in grants and awards from NSF, private sources, and internal awards to support her research agenda. She led the NSF-funded Household Water Insecurity Experiences Research Coordination Network (HWISE-RCN, 2018-2024), an international community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to advancing research in water insecurity. Her most recent award is a $4.6 million project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish a national center of excellence in humanities-based, trans-disciplinary, and community-engaged research on environmental crises and their disproportionate social and economic effects on vulnerable communities.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Business
• Political Science
• Engineering
• Environmental economics
• Environmental science
• Environmental planning
• Ecology
• Environmental resource management
• Management
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Environmental engineering
• Natural resource economics
• Water resource management
• Environmental health
• Economic growth
• Library science
• Law
• Management science
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Satellite-to-Street: Synthesizing Post-Disaster Views from Satellite Imagery via Generative Vision Models

  ArXiv.org · 2026-03-21

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, rapid situational awareness is critical. Traditionally, satellite observations are widely used to estimate damage extent. However, they lack the ground-level perspective essential for characterizing specific structural failures and impacts. Meanwhile, ground-level data (e.g., street-view imagery) remains largely inaccessible during time-sensitive events. This study investigates Satellite-to-Street View Synthesis to bridge this data gap. We introduce two generative strategies to synthesize post-disaster street views from satellite imagery: a Vision-Language Model (VLM)-guided approach and a damage-sensitive Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) method. We benchmark these against general-purpose baselines (Pix2Pix, ControlNet) using a proposed Structure-Aware Evaluation Framework. This multi-tier protocol integrates (1) pixel-level quality assessment, (2) ResNet-based semantic consistency verification, and (3) a novel VLM-as-a-Judge for perceptual alignment. Experiments on 300 disaster scenarios reveal a critical realism--fidelity trade-off: while diffusion-based approaches (e.g., ControlNet) achieve high perceptual realism, they often hallucinate structural details. Quantitative results show that standard ControlNet achieves the highest semantic accuracy, 0.71, whereas VLM-enhanced and MoE models excel in textural plausibility but struggle with semantic clarity. This work establishes a baseline for trustworthy cross-view synthesis, emphasizing that visually realistic generations may still fail to preserve critical structural information required for reliable disaster assessment.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Should we stay or should we go? Household water insecurity is associated with higher residential mobility ideation

  Water International · 2026-05-22

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Validation and Psychological Correlates of a Water Provider Trust Scale for the United States

  ACS ES&T Water · 2026-01-20

  articleOpen access

  We used national survey data from 2,526 US households to validate a four-item water provider trust scale. We then explored correlates of this scale using regression models to assess (1) whether the relationship between household water insecurity and water provider trust held after adjusting for personal demographics, health perceptions, and politics; (2) the mediating effects of antiestablishment orientations and perceived stress; and (3) whether these mediating effects vary by race and ethnicity. The water provider trust scale demonstrated a good fit and satisfied standard tests of dimensionality, reliability, and validity. Higher water insecurity was associated with lower water provider trust (β = −0.111, SE = 0.013, P < 0.001) adjusting for covariates. Both antiestablishment orientations and perceived stress, when specified as mediators, yielded negative indirect effects on water provider trust and negative direct effects of water insecurity on water provider trust. These effects from antiestablishment orientations were only significant among White respondents, while the effects from perceived stress were significant across racial and ethnic groups. The water provider trust scale can help utilities assess public perceptions of their services and improve public engagement in water system resilience-building, particularly in underserved communities.

  PublisherDOI

• The Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Scale: comparison scores from 27 sites in 22 countries

  UNC Libraries · 2026-04-14

  articleOpen access

  Household survey data from 27 sites in 22 countries were collected in 2017&ndash;2018 in order to construct and validate a cross-cultural household-level water insecurity scale. The resultant Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) scale presents a useful tool for monitoring and evaluating water interventions as a complement to traditional metrics used by the development community. It can also help track progress toward achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6 &lsquo;clean water and sanitation for all&rsquo;. We present HWISE scale scores from 27 sites as comparative data for future studies using the HWISE scale in low- and middle-income contexts. Site-level mean scores for HWISE-12 (scored 0&ndash;36) ranged from 1.64 (SD 4.22) in Pune, India, to 20.90 (7.50) in Cartagena, Colombia, while site-level mean scores for HWISE-4 (scored 0&ndash;12) ranged from 0.51 (1.50) in Pune, India, to 8.21 (2.55) in Punjab, Pakistan. Scores tended to be higher in the dry season as expected. Data from this first implementation of the HWISE scale demonstrate the diversity of water insecurity within and across communities and can help to situate findings from future applications of this tool.

  PublisherDOI

• Household water insecurity will complicate the ongoing COVID-19 response: Evidence from 29 sites in 23 low- and middle-income countries

  UNC Libraries · 2025-05-13

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Revisiting water insecurity and the state

  Water International · 2025-07-04

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Advancing Multiple‐Use Water Services for Development in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries

  Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Water · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Multiple‐use water services (MUS) encompass a variety of water services that span the various livelihood strategies commonly seen in communities throughout low‐ and middle‐income countries. MUS approaches can secure water for development, but limited peer‐reviewed research comprehensively evaluates MUS. This review addresses a gap in the literature by tracing MUS as an international development strategy and evaluating the peer‐reviewed scholarship published between 1990 and 2023 to describe the status and trends. The review identifies MUS attributes (e.g., water productivity, economics, health and nutrition, and gender empowerment) and the persistent barriers to scaling and institutionalization (e.g., regulatory and governance barriers and water quality). It then concludes with gaps in research (e.g., private sector roles and business models, ability to pay, ecosystem services, and climate resilience). MUS has the potential to be implemented tactically to address the nexus of water, food, nutrition, and water quality challenges, if research can contribute to evidence for scalable solutions that sufficiently address local needs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Toward sustainable desalination: a patent analysis of technology-development trajectories

  Sustainability Science Practice and Policy · 2025-01-29 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Research and development (R&D) in desalination has enabled innovations and expanded global water-supply capacity to enhance water security. Despite increased desalination capacity, significant sustainability concerns persist. While sustainable desalination efforts have primarily focused on improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions, less attention has been paid to other environmental impacts. Moreover, questions remain about which sustainable technologies have been developed and which stakeholders’ R&D priorities. To address these gaps, we analyze patent data to trace desalination technology-development paths while examining environmental impacts and the roles of government and industry. Using bibliographical analysis, text mining, and technology life-cycle analysis, we map the evolution of the global desalination sector over the past 20 years. Our analysis reveals geographical patterns in patenting activities, including developments in core technologies such as Multiple Effect Distillation (MED), Multi-Stage Flash Distillation (MSF), and Reverse Osmosis (RO). We identify a significant misalignment between R&D pathways and broader sustainability concerns, with implications for the long-term sustainability of desalination and regional water-security policies.

  PublisherDOI

• A protocol for the development of a validated scale of household water insecurity in the United States: HWISE-USA

  PLoS ONE · 2025-08-11 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  BACKGROUND: New metrics of household water insecurity have been validated for low- to middle-income countries, but it is unclear how these measurements apply to the experiences of people living in high-income countries. This project aims to develop and validate a novel metric for household water insecurity experiences in the United States (HWISE-USA) using a cross-sectional design and data from the Southwest, Midwest, and Western regions. METHODS: We outline the protocol for the development and validation of a novel household water insecurity scale for the United States to address this scientific need, including the following key steps: (1) item development through literature and theory; (2) pre-testing of items and expert review; (3) scale development and item reduction; and (4) scale validation. To assess the performance of the HWISE-USA scale, we will follow the same scale development analytics on a separate, quasi-nationally-representative U.S. sample. The scale will be generated from household survey data collected from communities at risk of water insecurity throughout the United States. DISCUSSION: We explain how a novel metric of water insecurity experiences for households in the United States has important implications for resource allocation, structural interventions, public health and infrastructure planning, and reductions in inequalities. REGISTRATION: osf.io/zvqs4.

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond peak water security: Household-scale experiential metrics can offer new perspectives on contemporary water challenges in the United States

  PLOS Water · 2025-08-12 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The U.S. has moved beyond peak water security. Infrastructural degradation, institutional inertia, and climate change are reducing the ability of households and communities to benefit from near-universal safe, adequate, affordable, sustainable water services. Yet, current supply-side research tools, that focus largely on system performance, are not equipped to measure the prevalence and lived experiences of household water insecurity, thus limiting the evidence available to policymakers, utilities, and communities to make decisions about water services. We discuss how demand-side metrics, such as household-level water insecurity scales validated for high-income contexts, such as the U.S., can help stakeholders to better identify local variation in user water issues, guide resource allocation, and improve hazard and disaster response. Targeted infrastructure investments informed by these metrics can enhance water security, reduce reliance on emergency social services, and promote public health and economic vitality. To address 21 st -century water challenges effectively, we must integrate experiential measures into local, regional, and national water assessments.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Urban Water Provisioning Systems and Household Water Security

  NSF · $254k · 2016–2020

• RCN: Building A Community of Practice for Household Water Insecurity Research

  NSF · $500k · 2018–2024

• Household Water Security in Low-Income Rural and Peri-Urban Communities in South Texas

  NSF · $127k · 2009–2013

• Doctoral Dissertation Research: Changing Labor and Land-Use Regimes in Market-Based Ecosystem Services Projects

  NSF · $16k · 2013–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Amber Wutich

  Arizona State University

  60 shared

• Alexandra Brewis

  Arizona State University

  26 shared

• Justin Stoler

  University of Miami

  23 shared

• Katie Meehan

  19 shared

• Sameer H. Shah

  18 shared

• Leila M. Harris

  University of British Columbia

  17 shared

• C Software

  University of British Columbia

  16 shared

• Oriol Mirosa

  Gender Studies

  16 shared

Awards & honors

• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science…
• Fellow, American Association of Geographers (2022)
• University Professorship, Office of the Provost, Texas A&M U…
• Dean's Distinguished Achievement in Research, College of Geo…
• Leshner Fellow for Public Engagement (Water and Food Securit…