Hidrodesafios 2025 Seminar
Image credit: Dr. J.P. Boisier
On Wednesday, November 26th 2025, I participated as a speaker at the seminar “Hidrodesafíos Chile 2025: Opportunities and Challenges in the Sanitation Sector” organized by the Sanitation Services Concessionaire Company S.A. (ECONSSA Chile) with sponsorship from the Chilean Association for Water Rights (AChDA) and Fundación Chile.
This event took place from 8:30 hrs at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the Las Condes district, with the objective of addressing the future of the sanitation sector in a context of water scarcity and climate change, and analyzing the role of seawater desalination and wastewater reuse in confronting the water crisis.
My presentation was entitled “Water Challenges in Southern Chile”, in which I addressed three key challenges for water resources in the Araucanía Region:
-
changes in the hydrological regime of mountain catchments and their impact on projected spring and summer streamflows,
-
selection of indices and timescales used to monitor droughts and the importance of linking them with droughts impacts on the territory,
-
the role of soil moisture in peak streamflows generated by intense storms, and preliminary results from an early flood warning system currently developed for critical basins of the Araucanía Region.
At the end of the day, representatives from the two presidential candidates debated the future of the healthcare sector in the context of water scarcity and climate change.
More information and the program for the event can be found at econssachile.cl/hidrodesafios-2025
Debate on proposals for the water and sanitary sector in Chile
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of La Frontera. I hold a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Trento (Italy) and completed postdoctoral training at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. I have more than 20 years of experience in water resources research and have previously served as an Associate Researcher at the Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR)2 and as a member of the Earth Sciences Assessment Group of the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID).
My research lies at the interface of hydrology, data science, and environmental sciences, with a particular focus on the use of gridded datasets and open-source tools to investigate droughts, extreme events, and water-related impacts of global change.
I work across spatial and temporal scales to improve the understanding of catchment-scale hydrological processes and to translate this knowledge into operational modelling, forecasting, and early-warning systems that support robust environmental decision-making.
Please reach out to collaborate 😃