Marta Zaniolo

Current rates of population and economic growth are driving the global demand for energy, water, and food, to an unprecedented level. Multiple uses of these resources are becoming increasingly conflictual, and the sector-by-sector approach to resource management that has dominated the past appears not viable anymore. Instead, an integrated (cross-sectoral and cross-boundary) management that addresses the water-energy-food nexus at the river basin level is warranted. An improved water governance is especially urgent in transboundary water resources systems of developing countries, characterized by numerous stakeholders, conflicting interests, resource scarcity, and fast growing demand. Moreover, there are evidences that climate change will worsen the situation, exacerbating the existing conflicts. Currently, the majority of regulated water systems are operated looking at basic information, a practice that overlooks the complexity of large scale systems and compromise their reliability. The unprecedented ‘‘torrent of information’’ that is becoming available to water system operators from pervasive sensor networks, remote sensing, cyberinfrastructures, and crowdsourcing, creates an opportunity for improving water systems operations in novel ways, and with minor investments. My PhD research focuses on the exploration of new techniques for exploiting the potential of exogenous information in the design of reservoir operating policies, with the aim of enhancing their resilience and adaptivity.