A team of researchers from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano is participating in the international project RAWS – Re-Analysis of Water for Society.
The project, supported by Schmidt Sciences, aims to transform the understanding of the global water cycle through high-resolution models and integrated approaches combining natural sciences, social sciences, and artificial intelligence.
The Department’s team is led by Prof. Andrea Castelletti and Prof. Sandra Ricart, both members of the Environmental Intelligence Lab.
Prof. Ricart coordinates stakeholder engagement activities through participatory processes involving local communities, institutions, and territorial stakeholders in major water-stressed basins. Through workshops, interviews, and co-creation tools, these activities enable the integration of local knowledge and real-world needs into scientific models.
In parallel, Prof. Castelletti leads the development of advanced methodologies based on machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyse observational data related to water infrastructure and water use. These approaches make it possible to identify patterns in human behavior and integrate them into global hydrological models, improving their predictive capacity and helping to fill important data gaps.
The integration of stakeholder engagement and data analysis strengthens the study of interactions between social and hydrological systems, supporting the development of more robust decision-making tools and effective solutions tailored to different contexts.