Vision
Water resource management in Hawai‘i is sustainable, responsible and data-driven. Scientific, cultural and social dimensions to the problem of water security are integrated in a transparent, stakeholder-driven and rigorous water research enterprise in Hawai‘i.
Mission
To ensure Hawai‘i’s future water security through an integrated program of research, education, community engagement and decision support.
What Matters: Our Values
- Relationships and trust matter. Our institutional values of Aloha and Respect are the foundation of our relationships – with each other, with our stakeholders, and with the community whose water future we strive to ensure. We are accountable to each other and to those we serve and collaborate with, and are ever vigilant of how our decisions, communications, actions, and attitudes reflect the exercise of our duties and integrity.
- Rigor and excellence matter. The hallmarks of ‘Ike Wai scholarship are our thoroughness, precision, and integrated approach that result in distinctive, innovative, and high quality teaching, research, and problem solving of utility. This requires a culture of peer review, transparency, a valuing of diversity, and the continuous testing of our science against program strategy and stakeholder needs.
- Purpose and process matter. Ensuring Hawai‘i’s Water Future through the development of decision support systems derived from cutting edge science and technology that has been informed and shaped by stakeholder input is our vision. It’s not about what I want to do, it’s about how our collective effort needs to come together to create this future.
- Place matters. We are committed to serving the indigenous, underserved, and underrepresented in our community. To that ‘Ike Wai adds its commitment to Sust’āinability – the idea that po’e (people), ‘āina (land), and wai (water) are intimately linked in a cycle of life unique to a community and that in order to achieve our vision we need to value this ecological context for it can inform, and will influence, both the science and practice of ‘Ike Wai.