Matteo Giuliani

HS Hydrological Sciences

The 2021 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Matteo Giuliani for outstanding contributions to water resources research, including water management, water policy, multi-objective water reservoir operations, and coupled human-natural processes.

Matteo Giuliani’s research has focused on the challenges posed by conflicting human pressures and a changing world to water resources management and planning. Giuliani’s research has helped improve our understanding and modelling of integrated water management, involving the coordination of multiple water sectors and demands when planning optimal water allocation and reservoir operations. His work has also addressed different ways to inform water reservoir operations by exploring emerging sources of knowledge (e.g., water smart metering, crowdsourcing and citizen observatories, weather and climate services, global climate teleconnections).

Giuliani has developed methods to support optimal water management decisions and trade-offs, while his research has also explored human decisions and behaviours under uncertainty, covering different spatial and temporal scales and spanning from institutional decisions made by river-basin authorities to individual behavioural attitudes toward water consumption. Giuliani also stands out in his ability to transfer scientific knowledge outside academia, creating trustworthy collaborations with public-water authorities and operational institutes and clearly deserves the Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award for the Hydrological Sciences Division.