A multidisciplinary network of senior experts

Prof. Al-Karablieh has served at the University of Jordan since 2000 and is a former Director of the Water and Environment Research and Study Center (WERSC) and former Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Management. He holds a Ph.D. in Agribusiness Management from Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel, Germany (1995). His work focuses on the economic, institutional and policy dimensions of water-resource management and technological innovation in water-scarce agricultural systems. His expertise covers IWRM and water allocation; irrigation efficiency and water productivity; economics of brackish-water desalination, treated wastewater reuse and decentralised water systems; CAPEX/OPEX and cost-performance assessment; cost-benefit and investment appraisal; affordability, willingness-to-pay and technology adoption; business, financing and service-delivery models; and governance, policy and institutional arrangements. A substantial part of his applied work has focused on the Jordan Valley, including agricultural water allocation, farm-level water use and productivity, water accounting, irrigation performance and the economic assessment of non-conventional water options. His recent leadership and technical work includes FAO water accounting and water-productivity assessment in the Northern Jordan Valley, together with contributions to SMART II, SMART-MOVE, SALAM II, national DEWATS assessments and STORM (Interreg NEXT MED). These assignments link technical water-system evidence with economic feasibility, resource-allocation decisions, institutional arrangements and pathways for adoption and scale-up. He also has extensive experience in drought risk management and climate resilience, including policy and institutional work supporting drought preparedness and agricultural adaptation. He is a member of Jordan’s National Drought Management Committee and the Drought Technical Committee at the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, contributing economic and water-resource perspectives to national drought-management processes. His work increasingly addresses the transition from demonstration to implementation through business and financing models, revenue and cost-recovery mechanisms, public and private financing options, ownership and governance structures, scale-up criteria and replication pathways. He brings these economic and institutional dimensions together with stakeholder and Multi-Actor processes, translating technical evidence into practical recommendations for farmers, water institutions, public authorities, technology providers, SMEs and financing actors. Prof. Al-Karablieh has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including work published in Desalination, Agricultural Water Management, Water Resources Management and Water Policy, and has contributed to major international publications including the Arab Water Report, Water Resources in Jordan, Liquid Assets and the Handbook of Brackish-Water Desalination in Water-Scarce Regions. His international consulting and research experience includes assignments and collaboration with FAO, UNICEF, UNESCO, IWMI, ICBA, UNDP, USAID, IFAD, AFD, ICARDA, IFPRI, GIZ and the World Bank, covering Jordan and more than ten countries in the Middle East and other water-scarce regions.”

Within ATEEC’s multidisciplinary projects, he supports the development and implementation of cloud-hosted databases, data-management and integration layers, APIs, interactive dashboards, and web/mobile decision-support interfaces. His role focuses on translating technical, environmental and socio-economic data and analytical outputs into practical digital tools for end users, project partners and decision-makers. His expertise complements specialist modelling and engineering partners by providing the database, integration, application and user-interface layer required to operationalise analytical and decision-support outputs. His responsibilities therefore focus on digital platform and user-facing implementation, while specialised scientific modelling, optimisation and plant-level sensing, telemetry and control systems remain within the respective technical partners’ areas of expertise.

Former Full Professor and Deputy Dean of Academic Research at the University of Jordan and Dean of Engineering at two universities in Oman, with visiting appointments in Germany, Japan and the USA. His depth spans water distribution and wastewater collection design, unit operations, air-pollution modelling and solid-waste economics; his recent research concentrates on wastewater treatability and reuse — electrocoagulation-adsorption for olive-mill, pharmaceutical and dairy wastewater, activated-carbon adsorbents from olive and date pits, and greywater reuse in Jordan — with 90+ journal publications, a US patent on organoclay-based water treatment, and assignments for USAID, UNDP, WHO, the World Bank Institute and GTZ.

He has served as Technical Lead and Strategic Advisor to donor-funded programmes (USAID, World Bank, FAO, IFAD, FCDO, GIZ), guiding drought typology design, vulnerability assessment and national drought planning, integrating stakeholder engagement with market-system development. As Development Manager at Acquatec Solutions he leads multi-country drought and climate-resilience programmes. Fluent in Arabic, French and English.

As Research Manager at Acquatec Solutions, his expertise spans remote sensing (WaPOR, CHIRPS, Sentinel), agroclimatic zoning and GIS dashboards for water and disaster-risk management. A trusted technical advisor to ministries and international agencies, recognised for scientific rigour and for translating complex data into actionable insight. Fluent in Arabic, French and English.

Fifteen-plus years designing, monitoring and evaluating irrigation systems — including automated drip and deficit irrigation — and delivering advanced irrigation-design and IWRM training for FAO, UNESCO, NCARE and AOAD. He led the vulnerability-and-adaptation chapter of Jordan's Third National Communication to the UNFCCC using dynamic downscaling of CORDEX ensembles, drafted Jordan's National Climate Change Adaptation Plan for agriculture for GIZ, and serves on Jordan's National Desertification Committee, with advanced capability in groundwater-pollution modelling, GIS and remote sensing, 25+ supervised theses and 30+ peer-reviewed articles.

Currently Senior Advisor for Nature Protection to the Minister of Environment; previously Director of the Hazardous Substances and Waste Management Directorate and Director of Environment Protection for Karak and the southern governorates. His technical grounding spans rainwater-harvesting and supplementary-irrigation field projects, GIS-based drought and groundwater-vulnerability mapping, environmental impact assessment and national POPs coordination as Jordan's UNDP focal point.

Her background includes planning and supervising large-scale maintenance and infrastructure programmes, coordinating contractors and consultants, preparing technical specifications and Bills of Quantities, and monitoring quality and progress — including projects with international development partners, renewable-energy applications and digital maintenance-management systems. At ATEEC she supports engineering coordination, infrastructure planning, technical documentation and implementation monitoring for decentralised water, energy and environmental systems.

Her specialisation is building monitoring-and-evaluation systems from the ground up — logical frameworks, results-framework analysis, MIS design, and baseline and beneficiary survey methodology — across governmental and donor-funded rural-development programming, most recently Jordan's climate-change response programme. Her toolkit includes benefit-cost analysis, econometric and feasibility studies, refined through training in China, the Netherlands, South Korea and India.

His expertise covers grid-connected and off-grid PV — load assessment, energy-consumption analysis, system configuration, component selection, energy-production estimation and battery storage — translating customer energy requirements into technically appropriate and economically viable solar solutions. At ATEEC he contributes renewable-energy assessment and solar-PV design for decentralised water, agricultural and environmental infrastructure.

Over three decades teaching micro- and macroeconomics, farm management, agricultural statistics and extension, co-authoring core Arabic-language textbooks. His applied research covers extension-system design, cooperative economics, socioeconomic surveys of farm households and women farmers, and financial feasibility of irrigation investments, for UNDP, FAO, USAID, AOAD and Jordan's Ministry of Agriculture. He also managed the Highland Development Project, an integrated rural-development programme.

His record spans nursery and cut-flower greenhouse production, large-scale pivot and drip irrigation management in Saudi Arabia, farm management in Sudan, sprinkler-irrigated alfalfa in Jordan's Azraq basin and fruit-tree farming in Al-Mafraq — alongside research assistance on applied field studies including enterprise-budget collection directly from farmers for USAID's water-valuation work. A practical, ground-level perspective that complements the team's technical and economic analysis.

Feasibility assignments include municipal water and sewage in Zambia, hydropower in Tajikistan and municipal water supply in Lesotho, together with irrigation-management and water-quality baselines in Jordan's Central Jordan Valley and evaluation of a treated-wastewater agricultural project in the Middle Ghor — serving FAO, Dar Al-Handasah, CES, GIBB, HARZA, IFAD, ESCWA, GTZ and AOAD across six countries, with a long publication record on agricultural pricing policy and comparative advantage.

As a university lecturer and academic counsellor he has designed stakeholder consultation processes, facilitation and workshops, and coordinated multi-year training programmes run in partnership with Cambridge University. As an evaluator for a national teaching-excellence award he assessed practitioner performance through document review and direct field observation, and he has published peer-reviewed research on stakeholder involvement in institutional decision-making.