Groundwater Depletion and Geospatial Data in Environmental Economics

Groundwater depletion poses a threat to many farmers across Indian states, affecting crop yield and income. Offering insurance against groundwater well depletion may mitigate risk for affected farmers. However, identifying affected regions and understanding where to offer insurance products of this kind requires drawing on rich geospatial datasets, including information on topography, lineaments, and geological structures. While this data exists for most of India, it is, as of right now, not easily accessible to economists. Gaining access to this data would be useful to many researchers, and we are hoping to make the geospatial data used in our ongoing groundwater project accessible to others in a systematic way.

The RA will help us to download and organize geospatial data for all Indian states, write a guide on how this data can be used, and help conceptualize a platform through which we will make this data accessible to other researchers.