The project BERLIN – BEhavioRaL INtelligence for evidence-based adaptation policies, submitted by Prof. Matteo Giuliani from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – Politecnico di Milano, has been selected among the winners of the FIS 2 – Italian Science Fund call.

In a global context marked by profound climate and societal changes, BERLIN aims to revolutionize water resource management, focusing on the strategic role of dams in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Today, over 46% of the world’s major rivers are regulated by more than 58,000 large dams, whose impact depends not only on natural hydrological conditions but also on human decision-making.

The main goal of BERLIN is to better understand and model this human behaviour by developing data-driven behavioural models, leveraging the power of Machine Learning and the vast amount of monitoring data currently available. The project also tackles risk assessment by exploring stakeholders’ perceptions and decision-making processes through a three-level approach: risk awareness, risk perception, and risk adaptation.

With a transdisciplinary perspective, BERLIN will develop a global hydrological model that explicitly incorporates the behaviour of dam operators. This model will be applied to key climate change hotspots – including semi-arid regions, river deltas, and snow-dependent basins – to support the design of effective, locally tailored adaptation policies.

BERLIN thus opens a new frontier in modelling human behaviour, offering innovative tools for the co-design of resilient and sustainable strategies for the management of water, energy, and food resources.