Currently at Discipline of Civil Engineering, College of Science and Engineering, Division of Tropical Environments and Societies at James Cook University, Australia. Also associated with: Water Quality and Contaminants Research Group, TropWATER (Centre for Tropical Waters and Aquatic Ecosystem Research), the Economic Geology Research Centre (EGRU) at James Cook University, and CRC-for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC-CARE), University of Newcastle, Australia. He completed his B.Tech. (Hons.) degree in Civil Engineering from the internationally renowned and premiere Engineering University in India, I.I.T Kharagpur,  with first class Honors, and was a rank holder. He then completed his Masters Degree in Civil Engineering with first rank in his specialization.  He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from Purdue University in U.S.A., specializing in Hydraulics and Systems Engineering, with a Major in Water Resources and Minor in Industrial and Systems Engineering.

After completion of his Ph.D. he worked in various positions at University of Washington, Seattle, WA, U.S.A., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, U.S.A., and then as a Research Faculty at University of California, Davis, CA, U.S.A.,  totaling bout 11 years. He then joined the Civil Engineering Department at IIT Kanpur in India, and was promoted to the Position of Professor in 1995 and also Senior Professor Position in 2009.  There, he also held the positions of Professor and Head of the Civil Engineering Department, and Head of the interdisciplinary Postgraduate Environmental Engineering and Management Program.  He also served as Visiting Professor at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, Denmark Technical University, Copenhagen, and Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok. He has guided many Master’s Theses and has completed guidance of many Ph.D. theses, at I.I.T. Kanpur India, then at James Cook University,  and one at University of South Australia, Adelaide. He has authored: many Technical Articles in very reputed peer reviewed international Journals, Book Chapters, and numerous Conference papers. He is also internationally well known for his pioneering research work on Optimal Identification of unknown pollution sources in contaminated Groundwater aquifers,  design of optimal monitoring networks incorporating  uncertainties for management of contaminated aquifers, management of coastal aquifers for saltwater intrusion control and remediation, and real-time operation of water reservoir (dams) systems. He was the Co-Chair of the  ASCE-EWRI  (American Society of Civil Engineers- Environmental and Water  Resources Institute) International conference on Water and Environmental Systems held first time outside U.S.A. He also, served as an advisor in the Water Resources Systems Technical Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

     He was instrumental in guiding to successful completion a new integrated Bachelors and Masters degree program in Civil Engineering at I.I.T. Kanpur, during his headship of the Civil Engineering Department. This program was designed to attract the best student talents to postgraduate studies in Engineering. He has been the  project leader in a number of state of the art  applied mega research projects related to Hydrologic Modeling and Water Resources/ Groundwater Management, first in U.S.A., then in India. He has worked as advisor to the U.P. government in the World Bank supported project on Restructuring of the Water Resources Sector in the state of U.P., India. He has served as a member of the high powered committee of the Government of India for final clearance of Large Scale River Basin Projects, including hydropower projects. At James Cook University he was the project leader and sole PI of a Mega, technology development project: developing computational tools for identification of unknown groundwater pollution sources and optimal design of monitoring networks for detection of groundwater pollution, funded by CRC-CARE, University of Newcasle, Australia, and University of South Australia, Adelaide. The total cash funding for this project including additional full Scholarship support for Ph.D. students, and dedicated project funding amounts to $629,000.00, starting in 2009.

Teaching

• CS2002: Catchment, Stream and Lake Engineering (Level 2; TSV)
• CS3004: Transportation Engineering (Level 3; TSV)
• CS4002: Hydraulic and Coastal Engineering (Level 4; TSV)
• CS4008: Water and Wastewater Engineering (Level 4; TSV)

Interests

Research

• Water Resources Systems Management; Systems Engineering; Groundwater Contamination Management; Coastal Aquifer Saltwater intrusion control; Reservoir Operations, Drought prediction.

Research Disciplines

• Civil Engineering (0905)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Land and Water Management (9609)

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Amirabdollahian M, Datta B and Beck P (2019) Application of a link simulation optimization model utilizing quantification of hydrogeologic uncertainty to characterize unknown groundwater contaminant sources. Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, 5 (1). pp. 119-131
• Lal A and Datta B (2019) Multi-objective groundwater management strategy under uncertainties for sustainable control of saltwater intrusion: solution for an island country in the South Pacific. Journal of Environmental Management, 234. pp. 115-130
• Roy D and Datta B (2019) Adaptive management of coastal aquifers using entropy-set pair analysis-based three-dimensional sequential monitoring network design. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, 24 (3).
• Al-Juboori M and Datta B (in press) Performance evaluation of a genetic algorithm-based linked simulation-optimization model for optimal hydraulic seepage-related design of concrete gravity dams. Journal of Applied Water Engineering and Research,
• Al-Juboori M and Datta B (in press) Optimum design of hydraulic water retaining structures incorporating uncertainty in estimating heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity utilizing stochastic ensemble surrogate models within a multi-objective multi-realisation optimisation model. Journal of Computational Design and Engineering,
• Al-Juboori M and Datta B (2018) Linked simulation-optimization model for optimum hydraulic design of water retaining structures constructed on permeable soils. International Journal of GEOMATE, 14 (44). pp. 39-46
• Esfahani H and Datta B (2018) Fractal singularity-based multiobjective monitoring networks for reactive species contaminant source characterization. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 144 (6).
• Hayford M and Datta B (2018) Geochemical reactive modeling of flow and transport process at a mine site in Northern Territory, Australia. International Journal of Geomate, 15 (51). pp. 9-15
• Lal A and Datta B (2018) Multiple objective management strategies for coastal aqifers utilizing new surrogate models. International Journal of Geomate, 15 (48). pp. 79-85
• Lal A and Datta B (2018) Development and implementation of support vector machine regression surrogate models for predicting groundwater pumping-induced saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers. Water Resources Management, 32 (7). pp. 2405-2419

Conference Papers

• Lal A and Datta B (2018) Genetic programming and Gaussian Process Regression models for groundwater salinity prediction: machine learning for sustainable water resources management. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability. In: SusTech 2018: IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability, 11-13 November 2018, Long Beach, CA, USA
• Roy D and Datta B (2018) Selection of meta-models to predict saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifers using entropy weight based decision theory. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability. In: SusTech 2018: 6th IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability, 11-13 November 2018, Long Beach, CA, USA

More

ResearchOnline@JCU stores 114+ research outputs authored by Dr Bithin Datta from 1981 onwards.

Current and recent Research Funding to JCU is shown by funding source and project.

Advisory Accreditation: I can be on your Advisory Panel as a Primary or Secondary Advisor.

These Higher Degree Research projects are either current or by students who have completed their studies within the past 5 years at JCU. Linked titles show theses available within ResearchOnline@JCU.

Current

• Robust Optimal Management of Saltwater Intrusion in Costal Aquifer Using Couples Simulation - Optimization Compliance Monitoring and Feedback Information. (PhD , Primary Advisor/AM)
• Multiple-Objective Optimal Groundwater Monitoring Network Design for Initial Detection of a Contaminant Plume Under Conditions of Uncertainty (Masters , Primary Advisor/AM)
• Linked Simulation- optimization methodology for reactive contaminant source characterization and optimal design of monitoring networks in abandoned mine sites (PhD , Primary Advisor/AM)
• Development of Sustainable Groundwater Management Methodologies to Control Saltwater Intrusion into Coastal Aquifers and an application to a coastal aquifer in Tropical Pacific Island Country (PhD , Primary Advisor/AM)
• Evaluation of Mathematical Models and Tools for Assessing Groundwater Quality, Availability and Sustainability in Ground Water-Aquifer Resource Systems. (PhD , Primary Advisor/AM)
• Analyses of JCU Groundwater-Ocean Interconnection, Extent and Potential Impacts (PhD , Secondary Advisor/AM)

Completed

• Seepage criteria based optimal design of water retaining structures with reliability quantification utilizing surrogate model linked simulation-optimization approach (2018, PhD , Primary Advisor/AM)
• Optimal Identification of Unknown Groundwater Contaminant Sources in Conjunction with Designed Monitoring Networks (2018, PhD , Primary Advisor/AM)
• Optimal monitoring network design and identification of unknown pollutant sources in polluted aquifers (2014, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• Development of integrated methodologies for optimal characterization of reactive contaminant sources and monitoring network design in polluted aquifer sites (2016, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• Development of integrated methodologies for optimal monitoring and source characterization in contaminated groundwater systems under uncertainty (2016, PhD , Primary Advisor)
• Development of a sustainable groundwater management strategy and sequential compliance monitoring to control saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifers (2018, PhD , Primary Advisor/AM)

The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
Note: Map points are indicative of the countries or states that institutions are associated with.