PROF. DR. MUHAMMAD ATIQ UR REHMAN TARIQ
It is also about the cities, farms, infrastructure, institutions and people that depend on the decisions we make around it.
Prof. Dr. Muhammad Atiq Ur Rehman Tariq is a water resources engineer, researcher and academic currently serving as Director of the Centre of Excellence in Water Resources Engineering at UET Lahore. His work covers flood-risk management, hydrology, hydraulic infrastructure, water governance, climate change, remote sensing, GIS and the growing use of data and artificial intelligence in water-resource planning.
Over the course of his career, he has worked across Pakistan and abroad in teaching, research, academic leadership and technical practice. This website brings that work together in one place so that researchers, institutions, engineers and potential collaborators can understand what he has actually worked on, where his experience is strongest, and how that work connects to the water challenges Pakistan is dealing with today.
Institutions and professional environments connected to his academic, research, teaching or sector-facing work
ABOUT
Official CEWRE profile photograph.
Dr. Tariq’s connection with water resources engineering goes back more than two decades. His postgraduate work at CEWRE included flood-risk zoning in Chiniot, and he later completed his PhD at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. From there, his career moved across university leadership, research and applied engineering work in Pakistan and internationally.
Before returning to CEWRE, he held academic roles that included COMSATS Abbottabad, Capital University of Science & Technology in Islamabad and Victoria University in Melbourne. His official CEWRE profile also records his contribution to engineering education in Pakistan, including work around outcome-based education and the wider process that supported Pakistan Engineering Council’s Washington Accord recognition.
Today, as Director of CEWRE, his role puts him in a position where postgraduate research, professional training and institutional collaboration meet. The Centre works with engineers and researchers involved in hydropower, irrigation, consulting, climate resilience, flood management and water-resource planning, which means the work is rarely isolated from the problems being faced outside the university.
RESEARCH PROFILE
Research databases do not always report identical totals, so these figures should be treated as public-profile indicators rather than a single official count.
SELECTED WORK
RESERVOIR OPERATIONS · TARBELA
Dr. Tariq co-authored research on simulation and optimization of Tarbela Reservoir operations, examining the relationship between reservoir management, sediment accumulation, irrigation releases and hydropower generation.
Read the Tarbela study ↗Image: NASA satellite photograph via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
HYDROLOGY · SOAN RIVER BASIN
A 2024 study involving Dr. Tariq reconstructed natural streamflow and quantified hydrological drought in the Soan River Basin.
Read the Soan River study ↗Image: Obaid Raza / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.
INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATION · WAPDA
During the Chairman WAPDA visit to UET Lahore in October 2023, Dr. Tariq briefed the delegation on CEWRE’s role, research facilities and technical work.
View the UET record ↗Image: University of Engineering & Technology Lahore.
HYDROPOWER EDUCATION · CEWRE + WAPDA
In January 2025, UET Lahore inaugurated an MSc Hydropower Engineering programme at CEWRE under which 25 WAPDA officers were to pursue graduate study.
View the programme announcement ↗Image: University of Engineering & Technology Lahore.
SELECTED RESEARCH
Rather than turning this page into a bibliography, this section highlights a small number of papers that give a useful picture of the kind of questions Dr. Tariq has worked on.
A broad look at how flood-risk strategies should be selected rather than assuming the same type of intervention is right in every setting.
A paper that connects the physical realities of Pakistan’s water system with allocation, governance and wider hydro-political pressures.
Research on how reservoir operations can be evaluated across several benefits rather than treating storage, power and irrigation as separate problems.
Work focused on understanding drought through the hydrological record rather than only through rainfall or short-term observations.
A useful example of his wider interest in what water actually produces economically, not only how much water a system consumes.
INSTITUTIONAL WORK
This section deliberately avoids pretending every institutional connection is a personal client relationship. These are documented professional, academic, supervisory or CEWRE-facing connections.
CEWRE has worked with WAPDA through technical visits, postgraduate hydropower education and sector-facing events. Dr. Tariq has also appeared as a keynote speaker on AI-driven water-resources planning at a WAPDA conference.
Current CEWRE records show serving Punjab Irrigation Department executive engineers among the PhD researchers under Dr. Tariq’s supervision.
CEWRE’s current academic network includes senior WWF-Pakistan freshwater and leadership personnel as adjunct or visiting faculty.
His supervision and CEWRE network include professionals from Pakistan Engineering Services and Rehman Habib Consultants, while the Centre also maintains wider industry linkages with organisations such as NESPAK.
CONTACT
There is no need to turn the contact section into a sales pitch. If the work is relevant, the background above should already make that clear.