The complex relations between the human and the water systems and their relevance for policy making: Gabriele Standardi and his team within the CMCC- ECIP Division have been exploring a poorly studied and yet crucial research area.

How are humans influencing the water presence in our world, and vice versa? Gabriele Standardi, working within the Economic analysis of Climate Impacts and Policy Division (ECIP) at CMCC told us about this fascinating topic at the CMCC Annual Meeting 2019, with his presentation “Water and agriculture policies design in a changing world”.

“The aim of our current work is to develop a methodology that allows us to capture the complex and multifaceted relations existing between the human system and the water system. This work is particularly relevant to the analysis of water policies or agriculture policies, but also more in general to predict climatic shocks that could stress our water availability in the future” – explains Gabriele.

The relationship between the socio-economic system and the hydrologic system is very complex and has been poorly understood in literature. So far, the analysis has been focusing mainly on the interrelation between two economic models, where the output from one model was taken as an input for the other. “On the other hand, within our study we use three different models: a hydrologic model, a micro-economic model and a macro-economic one. We try to capture all the feedbacks existing between them, but we also try to make them communicate with each other in a consistent way. We do so through some protocols which are able to identify the exchange of information between the different models, allowing us to analyse in a more precise way the complex interconnections between human and water systems”.