Thursday, December 11, 2025 | 5:00 - 6:00 PM
Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering - Politecnico di Milano
Aula Alfa (Building 24)
Contacts: phd-step@polimi.it
Abstract
Thursday, December 11, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM, in Aula Alfa at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – Politecnico di Milano (Building 24), the foruth meeting of the seminar series Meet the STEP-CHANGErs – A Series of Voices Shaping Sustainable Change will take place.
The seminar series provides a platform to explore cutting-edge research in sustainability through the work of PhD students in the Science, Technology, and Policy for Sustainable Change program. Each session highlights how emerging research addresses real-world sustainability challenges, offering insights into innovative solutions and fostering a broader conversation on pathways toward systemic change. The events also provide an important opportunity for networking among PhD students and the academic community, with an aperitif following each session.
Dennis Zanutto will present the talk “Hydroinformatics Tools for Adaptive Planning and Policy-making in Water Distribution Systems.” Urban drinking water networks are complex and critical infrastructures that must operate under deep uncertainty—from the impacts of climate change to shifting socio-economic demands—which increasingly strain traditional, rigid engineering approaches.
This work introduces a suite of hydroinformatic tools designed to support utility managers and policy-makers in decisions ranging from short-term operational control to long-term system planning and design. At the centre of the research is an Adaptive Planning framework that tightly couples short-term operational modelling and optimisation with long-term infrastructure planning. This integration enables decision-makers to exploit operational flexibility and policy levers in contexts where physical infrastructure changes—such as installing or upsizing pipes—are costly and difficult to reverse. By doing so, the framework promotes sustainable, long-term resilience.
Beyond adaptive planning, the talk highlights complementary hydroinformatics tools that contribute to a future-proof urban drinking water system, including short-term water demand forecasting, optimal sensor placement, and AI-enhanced decision support (initiated through the EPANET MCP server).
Andrea Schiavo will present the talk “METAFish: A Spatially Explicit and Climate-Responsive Framework for Evaluating Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management in the Adriatic–Ionian Hake Fishery.” Fisheries provide food, livelihoods, and vital ecosystem services, yet their sustainability is increasingly threatened by climate change, rising fishing pressure, habitat degradation, and socio-economic constraints. Globally, more than one third of assessed fish stocks are exploited at unsustainable levels, and the Mediterranean Sea stands out as one of the most overfished regions. Fragmented stocks, strong environmental variability, and complex transboundary governance further complicate effective fisheries management.
To address these challenges, approaches aligned with Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management are needed—approaches that integrate ecological, environmental, and socio-economic dimensions into decision-making. Within the EU Horizon 2020 SEAwise project, this research develops METAFish, a spatially explicit and climate-responsive Management Strategy Evaluation framework designed to assess alternative management strategies for European hake, one of the most valuable target species in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.
METAFish integrates metapopulation dynamics, larval connectivity, environmental variability, and fleet behaviour, allowing the evaluation of effort-based, technical, and area-based measures under multiple future scenarios. The results highlight how spatial connectivity, environmental drivers, and management design jointly shape population dynamics and fishery outcomes. They also underscore the importance of incorporating climate information and spatial processes into strategic evaluations.
A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis module provides a transparent way to compare strategies across ecological, economic, and social objectives. Together, these contributions support the development of more robust, adaptive, and ecosystem-based fisheries management strategies for the Mediterranean region.
Please register here to attend the seminar.