At the centre of the life of professor Andrea Rinaldo, a hydraulic engineer born in Venice, there has always been water. Ecohydrology, ecosystems and river morphology are his main interests. A thought leader in hydrological science, in 2023, for his studies on the relationship between water and living communities, he was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize (among other things, he was the first Italian to receive it). The prestigious prize is awarded annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute in collaboration with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to individuals and organisations that achieve extraordinary results related to water research.

It is Andrea Rinaldo’s turn to open the 2024 cycle of Earth Emergency –  promoted by the Department of environment constructions and design SUPSI  in partnership with Bobbium – with the lecture Il governo dell’acqua nel mondo che cambia (Water governance in the changing world).

The climate is changing rapidly. We must do so too, not taking for granted time-established privileges, customs and traditions of places, political and social organisations, and expressions of collective sensitivity. We need careful readings of water governance, rethinking the natural and built environment around us.

Andrea Rinaldo believes that the great issues of safeguarding water governance concern both the North and the South of the world and oblige us to reflect on the relationship between landscape transformations, land uses and the dynamics of natural resources, but also on a development ethic that takes into account a fair distribution of privileges and resources.

Rinaldo has been a professor of hydraulic construction at the University of Padua since 1985 and at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne since 2008. He was a research associate at MIT-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1993–2001) and Princeton (2004–2008). He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Accademia dei Lincei.

The event, free of charge and open to all interested persons, takes place on Wednesday 25 September 2024 at 6.30 p.m. in the Sala polivalente (ground floor) of the SUPSI Campus in Mendrisio (via Flora Ruchat-Roncati 15).

Final refreshment.

Registration is required for organisational reasons.