Special Session 1
Special Session: Water supply and network design, modeling and management in a changing environment
Chairman:
Prof. Eng. Marco Franchini - Head of the Engineering Department. University of Ferrara (IT)
Owing to population growth, urbanization, and climate change, it is nowadays necessary to provide cities with an ever-increasing amount of freshwater. However, water supply and water distribution systems are complex infrastructures often difficult to control, manage and adapt. Rehabilitation processes, leakage management, energy costs, districtualization, pressure control, demand forecasting, energy recovery, water consumption monitoring are just some of the problems that water utilities must face daily to make freshwater available to users at appropriate times and with suitable pressures, quality, and costs. To this regard, the current Special Session aims to bring together researchers and practitioners by giving them the opportunity to discuss and disseminate ideas on water supply and water distribution systems modeling, management, and control.
The topics that will therefore be of interest (but not exclusive) are:
- Transient analysis
- New technologies and advances in sensors, GIS, SCADA, and ICT for data management
- Water demand forecasting and modeling at different spatiotemporal scales
- Case studies, practical and laboratory applications
- Water end-use characterization and fixture consumption quantification
- New technologies in water distribution systems practice
- Asset management and performance modelling
- Leakage management and control
- Bursts and breakages monitoring and modelling
- Water quality issues
- Network and system optimization: planning, (re)design, rehabilitation, and expansion
- Real time monitoring and control of water distribution systems
- Potable water management in water-shortage and climate-change context
- Steady and unsteady water distribution network modelling
- Water quality modelling
- Water security, reliability, and resilience against exceptional events
- Data driven and soft computing formulations
- Water Vs Energy in supply systems and distribution networks
Marco Franchini Short Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Marco Franchini has been Full Professor since 2001 and he is currently head of the Department of Engineering in Ferrara where he teaches Hydraulic Constructions. He has been coordinator of the graduate and undergraduate didactic structure of the civil engineering and environmental engineering courses for the years 2001-2015. He was Associate Editor of the Journal of Hydrology in the years 1992-2002. He is currently Associate Editor for the Journals Water (MPDI) and WRPM (ASCE) and Editor of the Journal Water Supply (IWA). He was local coordinator for UNIFE of the project POWADIMA (funded by the European Community - EVK1-2000-22095). He is currently reviewer for about ten international ISI Journals. Overall, he has coordinated more than 50 research and applied projects for several agencies. He was president of "Centro Studi Sistemi Idrici" and scientific coordinator of the Terra&Acqua Tech Laboratory of the University of Ferrara (2014-2019). He was associate researcher of the CNR-IRPI in Perugia (Italy) (2009-2015). He has been in the panel of more than ten National and International Conference Committees. He is (co)author of more than 260 papers published in national and international conference proceedings and journals. He has been awarded with (1) "Certificate of excellence to recognize excellence and outstanding achievement as the best paper nominee in the Battle of the Water Calibration Network " - Tucson, Arizona, 2010; (2) ICLP 2011 Best paper Award, Association for Logic Programming, (3) Certificate of excellence to recognize excellence and outstanding achievement as the best paper nominee in the Battle of Background leakage assessment for Water Networks" - Bari, Italia, 2014, (4) The program chair of the international Joint conference on Artificial intelligence, Best Paper in sister conference, 2013, Bejing, Cina and (5) 5th rank in the Battle of Leakage Detection and Isolation Methods (WDSA 2021, Bejing, Cina).