SimHydro 2025

In addition to the recurrent topics of the conference, SimHydro 2025 will focused sessions around the following major themes:

• Data for water and models: The data production in the water sector is exponential. New sensors allow to collect multiple values at low cost. The communication networks – land based (radio) and satellite based networks – are currently offering a wide coverage of urban environments and are strongly progressing at the catchment scale. The newly launched satellites are producing today numerous data that can be used to characterize hydrologic variables almost in real time. The fast increase of the data flow is questioning the data management strategy of the water actors who are looking for the sustainability of their approach. The availability of new data opens opportunities for the modelling approach, including processes and scale. In a similar way, monitoring services are facing difficult choices for their data management strategy: how to acquire?, how to validate? , how to store?, how to access? how to assess quality? are some of the key questions that request anwers. Obviously, as the water actors are facing this new challenge, the need for standards regarding data collection and management is emerging. The plenary session will address those key subjects through several practical cases and will allow all the community to enrich the debate with new experiences and good practices.
  
  
•  Artificial Intelligence (AI) for water issues: With the availability of computational resources and real-time communication protocols, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods and tools are flowing within all scientific and technical sectors including the water domain. The massive deployment of those tools is obviously attracting interest of the water community as they offer the possibility to address complex problems and can potentially support real-time operations that represent a major step for many professionals engaged within operations. However, if the perspectives look promissing, the practical development and implementation requests to go through a critical and validation process that is not yet fully formalized. Based on the latest AI developments and the most recent implementations in the water domain, the plenary session will address the added value of the AI approaches and the associated challenges that should be understood by the water community.
  
  
• Digital twins: The concept digital twin is gaining interest in the water community and especially for water services as demonstrated during SimHydro 2023. The digital representation of assets, devices and water systems is following the SCADA deployment that has been already used for decades. The digital twins represent an integration phase that still at the early stage. The ambition to improve efficiency and performance in water service sector requests to integrate an increased complexity that is not formalized within the current scope of digital twins. Within this perspective, the deployment of the digital twin concept to catchments represents even a greater challenge. The session will address the latest developments for digital twins in the various water sectors.
• Models for extreme hydrologic events: Over the last four years, many regions of the world have faced one of the most exceptional drought events of the past 50 years. At the same time, severe convective storms and the associated flash floods are, since 2024, the most costly disasters for insurance companies. Under those exceptional circumstances, once again the need for modelling tools able to address and to anticipate this type of situation has been underlined for the development of sustainable water sharing strategies. Obviously the innovative approaches regarding waste water treatment for water reuse and recycle have gained interest and appear on the list of operational solutions. A holistic approach is called and requests efficient modelling tools. In this context, the current modelling approach needs to be updated and to integrate a wider spectrum of processes to be able to formulate proper management strategies encompassing water uses, natural environment preservation and water related hazards mitigation.