Dr. Paul Koch has over 20 years of experience in water resources management and environmental consulting. As a post-doc at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he evaluated statistical approaches for estimating hydrologic model parameters from earth observation data. After entering private industry, he coordinated a major floodplain mapping project that encompassed over 1600 river miles in a 3300-square mile watershed.

At Marstel-Day, Dr. Koch served as the technical lead for the first-ever Army Water Security Strategy, which was completed in 2011. He developed a spreadsheet model for forecasting water demand at Fort Bragg and designed a database for interpreting responses to a complex survey of land use concerns among a selected set of military installations. He has supported the assessment of water resources issues for a variety of installation plans.

As a Franklin Fellow at the Department of State, Dr. Koch supported interagency and diplomatic efforts to address the impact of climate change on food security. He provided substantive input to the founding framework of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture and to a key policy document articulating U.S. interests in promoting international data sharing.

Dr. Koch served as the 2018 Chair of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Patuxent Reservoirs Watershed Protection Group. During that time the Committee pressed for coordinated progress toward reducing road salt application rates and began a new initiative to analyze earth observation data to show land cover trends within the watershed.

In his most recent work as an environmental consultant, Dr. Koch has been engaged in the development of watershed management plans for reducing pollutant loads to comply with NPDES permit requirements and meet specified targets for water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.

Dr. Koch has experience conveying technical concepts in a way that can be understood by a variety of audiences. Under the auspices of the Federal Highway Administration, he taught a continuing education course in hydrology offered at state departments of transportation throughout the U.S. He has provided technical briefings to stakeholders concerned with various water resources issues in Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Dr. Koch is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Maryland. He is a graduate of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at George Washington University and received his MS through the Technology and Policy Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Nebraska, where his dissertation examined the capacity of artificial neural networks to model crop response in irrigated agriculture. As an editor, Dr. Koch produced the fourth edition of Water Sources, which is part of the 5-book series Principles and Practices of Water Supply Operations published by the American Water Works Association.