Research Projects
Research Projects
SAHARA is a PRIN-PNRR project aimed to enhance drought resilience by expanding surface water storage infrastructures, including options like dam heightening, revision of lakes/reservoirs operating space, and construction of small storage reservoirs distributed on the territory. The project will develop a digital twin able to simulate the interdependent dynamics of coupled human-natural systems for exploring historical and future surface water availabilities and water demands in two different case studies in Northern Italy, namely the Adda River Basin and the Adige River Basin.
People involved: Matteo Giuliani (project coordinator), Andrea Castelletti, Martina Merlo, Matteo Sangiorgio. Duration: 2022-2026. More info HERE.
SOS-WATER is an EU-Horizon project aimed at defining a safe operating space (SOS) for water resources in a changing climate and society to ensure a sufficient and reliable supply of water of a quality acceptable for human activity and natural ecosystems. The project will co-create future scenarios and management pathways with stakeholders in five case studies in Europe and abroad. The results of SOS-Water will help improving the understanding of water resources availability and streamline water planning and management at local to regional levels and beyond, such that the allocation of water among societies, economies, and ecosystems will be economically efficient, socially fair, and resilient to shocks.
People involved: Andrea Castelletti (PI), Matteo Giuliani, Sandra Ricart, Wei Xia. Duration: 2022-2026. More info HERE.
CLINT (CLIMATE INTELLIGENCE) is an EU-H2020 project aimed at developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework to process big climate datasets for improving Climate Science in the detection, causation, and attribution of extreme events, namely tropical cyclones, heatwaves and warm nights, droughts, and floods. The AI framework will cover the quantification of impacts on a variety of socio-economic sectors and across different spatial scales (from European to local hotspots in Africa and Europe), under historical, forecasted, and projected climate conditions. Innovative AI-enhanced Climate Services will be developed and operationalized into Web Processing Services and into a demonstrator to facilitate the uptake of project results by public and private entities for research and sector-specific services.
People involved: Andrea Castelletti (project coordinator), Matteo Giuliani, Andrea Ficchì, Guido Ascenso, Elena Matta, Filippo Dainelli, Martina Merlo. Duration: 2021-2025. More info HERE.
GoNEXUS is an EU-H2020 project aimed at developing a framework for designing and assessing innovative solutions for an efficient and sustainable coordinated governance of the water-energy-food-ecosystems (WEFE) nexus. GoNEXUS will build a powerful model toolbox, linking forefront global/continental and river basin models, and creative participatory Nexus Dialogues to codesign scenarios and solutions for a joint governance of the WEFE nexus. Solutions will combine policy changes and soft path options with technical and infrastructure measures for a more resilient future, and will be evaluated using the model toolbox through a set of novel nexus indicators and criteria to assess trade-offs and improve the nexus management. GoNEXUS will be applied at global and EU levels and to six river basins with different WEFE challenges in Europe and Africa. People involved: Andrea Castelletti (PI), Matteo Giuliani, Wyatt Arnold, Sandra Ricart, Matteo Sangiorgio. Duration: 2021-2025. More info HERE.
BECLICK is a research project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (NextGeneration EU program) aimed at reinforcing risk management by modelling farmers’ and stakeholders’ behaviour regarding climate change. The project takes a systemic and stakeholder-centred approach previously developed in the MODFABE project (EU-H2020-MSCA-IF). BECLICK will improve the Agent-Based Model approach by enriching information flow, operationalization and demonstrating simulated interactions between the social and agroecosystem spheres in the innovative context of reinforcing adaptation to a changing climate from social-learning. Risk aversion, if-then rules, heterogeneity interactions among agents and their network effects will be considered. The project will combine local and global tests, and the results will be used as a safe laboratory for policy experimentation, testing the effectiveness of strategies and policy measures on climate change. People involved: Andrea Castelletti (project supervisor), Sandra Ricart (PI), Paolo Gazzotti, Matteo Giuliani. Duration: 2023-2025.
PRINTFLOODS is a research fellowship project funded by AXA-Research Fund and endorsed by IOC-UNESCO as UN Ocean Decade Action. The project is aimed at strengthening coastal communities’ resilience through better forecasting and projecting compound flood risk. Using machine learning techniques, the project seeks to better predict compound flood risk and identify high-risk areas in order to strengthen anticipatory humanitarian action and index-based insurance, to reduce the impacts of floods induced by extreme weather events and sea level rise caused by climate change.
People involved: Andrea Ficchì (PI, Research Fello), Andrea Castelletti (project supervisor). Duration: 2023-2024.
ide3a ([International alliance for Digital E-learning, E-mobility and E-research in Academia) is a collaborative project involving a multidisciplinary and international consortium of five European partner universities and led by Technische Universität Berlin which aims to develop a virtual campus where technologies for e-learning, e-research and e-mobility are integrated with two specific objectives. This international network of European universities is a living lab for developing new tools for the digitalisation of teaching and learning in the internationalisation process, with a particular focus on interdisciplinary research-based learning and short-term mobility in international blended learning formats.
NEWAWE is a EU-H2020-ITN project aiming at shaping the future of water governance by developing research and training the next generation of water governance leaders. The research will explore the multi-scalar processes that characterize the socio-hydrological dynamics and develop a reflective and transdisciplinary assessment capacity for evaluating new water governance paradigms. More info HERE.
Past Projects
IN-WOP is a Water JPI project which aims at investigating the contribution of many-objective optimization approaches to Integrated Water Resources Management. The research will explore how advanced many-objective optimization algorithms contribute in enriching the solution space with alternatives that better reflect the diverging perspectives of stakeholders, and align better with ethical concerns. Results will be deployed in three case studies with diverse hydrological and cultural settings, i.e. Lake Como (Italy), Seine River (France), and Meguellil Basin (Tunisia).
ADDAPT is a Regione Lombardia project aimed at developing water resources planning and control strategies at the river basin scale, and evaluate their contribution towards building drought-resilient communities with high adaptation capacity to climate change. The project is focused on the ADDA river basin (Italy). More info HERE.
Project Ô is a EU-H2020 project which aims at demonstrating the efficacy of technologies for more circular and sustainable water management systems. The research will design, develop and test an ICT-based decision-analytic platform to support policy makers in selecting optimal water planning portfolios, composed of traditional options, new water re-use technologies and advanced regulatory mechanisms. The project demonstrates the efficacy and efficiency of planning and technology tools for a circular economy, and an integrated and symbiotic use of water in four different sites: two which are water utility-driven in the Puglia region (Italy) and Almendralejo (Spain); and two business-driven in an inland, salt water aquaculture facility in Eilat (Israel) and in a textile company in Omis (Croatia).
MODFABE is an EU-H2020-MSCA-IF project aiming at modelling climate change farmers’ perception to improve decision-making processes in coupled human-nature systems. Working on a collaboratively and social-learning frame problem, the research will explore how to improve the climate change adaptation capacity of farmers while informing managers about the effectiveness of different types of interventions. The project is focused on the Muzza-Lake Como system (Lombardy, Italy).
STREAM is a research project funded by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation aimed at developing a framework supporting the identification of robust, innovative, and effective solutions for addressing sustainable water resources management in water-stressed areas. STREAM will lay a solid foundation for improved resilience and security of water resources contributing to a transition in water governance, by coupling socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable reservoir management. The project is focused on the Messara Valley (Crete).
DAFNE is a H2020 EU project targeted to establish a decision-analytic framework for the exploration of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in transboundary river basins in Africa. DAFNE will integrate multiple and diverse international and local academic expertise, ranging from natural sciences, water engineering, and environmental economics, to water governance and laws in order to facilitate social understanding of the impact and support comparative analysis of alternative development pathways. Results will be deployed in two pilot case studies in rapidly growing African regions, the Zambezi and the Omo Rivers basins.
AMBER is a H2020 EU project targeted to improve European streams connectivity. AMBER will apply adaptive barrier management to help reconnect Europe’s rivers, the smart way. AMBER will make the first global assessment of stream connectivity across Europe, and use the power of citizen science and the latest developments in remote sensing, molecular methods and assessment of ecosystem services to prioritize areas for conservation and optimize barrier management.
IRIS is a collaborative research project with Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale to explore new remote sensing river surveys, which can support the implementation of the Water Framework Directive concerning hydromorphological components of the ecological status, and can integrate the already existing Italian protocol IDRAIM. IRIS will explore the potentialities offered by the European programme on Earth Observation, Copernicus to monitor river channel processes and forms. In particular, IRIS will analyze the information provided by Sentinel-2 multi-spectral bands and Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to classify macro-geomorphic units and associated processes within major river systems in Italy. Ground-truths will be collected by UASs (Unmanned Aerial Systems, also known as Drones) acquisitions. Three case studies will be selected as representative of the the diversity of Italian river systems from north to south. The objective is to explore the existing potentialities to develop an integrated river hydromorphological monitoring framework usable at national scale, where low spatial resolution (meters), acquired frequently (days) and available on large scale (continental) information derived by Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 is fused in a cost-effective manner with local, high resolution UAS acquisitions.
SO-WATCH is a Fondazione Cariplo project aiming at developing and testing a novel decision-analytic framework to assist decision-makers in designing and assessing alternative soft-path measures for improving the overall water productivity at the river basin scale. SO-WATCH will combine distributed and participatory management, coordination mechanisms, low-cost and reversible infrastructural interventions, and smart economics to increase the flexibility of water management practices under current and projected hydro-climatic and socio-techno-economic conditions. The framework will be developed for the Lake Como river basin, Italy.
IMPREX is a H2020 EU project designed to support the reduction of Europe’s vulnerability to extreme hydrological events through improved understanding of the intensity and frequency of future disrupting features that may be very different from today’s reality. By combining expertise from both public and private sector, the IMPREX project consortium aims to bridge the gap that often exists between users and providers of hydro-climatic information. The goal is to substantially improve our forecasting capability of hydrological extremes and their impacts at short to seasonal time scales. We are contributing to IMPREX by exploring the operational value of forecast for agriculture and hydropower in the Lake Como basin.
SmartH2O is an EU-FP7 project developing an ICT platform to understand and model the consumers’ current behaviour, based on historical and real-time water usage data, predict how the consumer behaviour can be influenced by various water demand management policies: water savings campaigns, social awareness campaigns, to dynamic water pricing schemes, and raise the awareness of water consumers on their current water usage habits and their lifestyle implications and to stimulate them to reduce water use. Results have been developed in three challenging use cases, in selected districts of Valencia (S), London (UK) and Locarno (CH) , potentially reaching millions of users.
IMRR – Integrated and sustainable water Management of Red-Thai Binh Rivers system in a changing climate aims at developing and promoting strategies for the sustainable management of the Red-Thai Binh Rivers System in Vietnam through coordinated decision-making and negotiation, supported by modelling and optimization tools and through capacity building of local authorities in the water sector.