Giuliano Di Baldassarre
Biographic Data
| ID | 1569934 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Giuliano Di Baldassarre |
| GIVEN NAMES | Giuliano |
| FAMILY NAME | Di Baldassarre |
| SIGNATURE | DI BALDASSARRE G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Uppsala University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8180-4996 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Beyond profit: Modelling the socio-hydrological impacts of agricultural insurance and drought adaptation
Agricultural insurance is promoted as a drought-risk tool, yet its net long-term socio-hydrological impacts and interactions with other adaptations remain disputed. We expand the Geographical, Environmental and Behavioural model (GEB), a fully distributed hydrological model coupled with an agent-based model (ABM), a process-based crop model and a dynamic farmer adaptation behavior model. We add two adaptation options (wells, crop switching) and t…
Risk perception of climate change and global crises: Influences of socio-economic drivers and political orientations
Climate change increasingly impacts health and livelihoods, with extreme climate events causing significant economic losses and health risks. Understanding how socio-economic drivers and political orientation influence public risk perception is key for effective climate policies. This study aims to show how gender, age, income, political orientation, education, and place of residence shape perceptions of climate change as compared to other global…
How good is my drought index? Evaluating predictability and ability to estimate impacts across Europe
Identifying drought indices that effectively predict future drought impacts remains a critical challenge in seasonal forecasting, as these indices provide the necessary actionable information that enables stakeholders to better anticipate and respond to drought-related challenges. This study evaluates how drought indices balance forecast skill and relevance for estimating impacts across Europe. Using European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forec…
A review of open data for studying global groundwater in social–ecological systems
Global data have served an integral role in characterizing large-scale groundwater systems, identifying their sustainability challenges, and informing on socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of groundwater. These insights have revealed groundwater as a dynamic component of the water cycle and social–ecological systems, leading to an expansion in groundwater science that increasingly focuses on groundwater’s interactions with ecological, socioe…
The interplay between the urban development of Rome (Italy) and the Tiber River floods: A review of two millennia of socio-hydrological history
The urban development of Rome (Italy) has been intertwined with the dynamics of the Tiber River since its foundation. In this review paper, we analyse more than 2500 years of flood history and urban development to untangle the dynamics of flood risk and assess the resulting socio-hydrological phenomena. Until the 1800s, urban dwellers living in the riparian areas of the Tiber River were accustomed to frequent flooding. From the 1900s, the constru…
All dried up: The materiality of drought in Ladismith, South Africa
This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping drought, along with the agency of biophysical processes - soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate - that c…
Pluralising the materiality of water: More-than-water, lively waters, water with, and the agency of hydro-social assemblages
This special issue combines insights from an array of theoretical perspectives, including political ecology, Indigenous studies, and more-than-human and feminist geographies to engage with a critical question for water studies: What are the theoretical, empirical and methodological implications of a closer engagement with the matter and properties of water and infrastructure? To answer this question, the contributions draw on a geographically and…
Over-reliance on water infrastructure can hinder climate resilience in pastoral drylands
Extreme droughts are affecting millions of livestock farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, causing water shortages, famines, migration and fatalities. The construction of new small water infrastructures (SWIs), such as deep wells and boreholes, is increasingly supported by climate resilience programmes of non-governmental organizations and national governments to improve water availability for agro-pastoralists, especially as an emergency response to ex…
Living in a pandemic: A review of Covid-19 integrated risk management
Managing new and complex risks has been one of the greatest societal challenges. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments all over the world had to make urgent decisions to address a public health crisis. Such decisions had to consider the impacts of alternative options on the public health, citizens' behaviours, and countries' economies. However, most policies undertaken during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic were based primar…
Significant relationships between drought indicators and impacts for the 2018–2019 drought in Germany
Despite the scientific progress in drought detection and forecasting, it remains challenging to accurately predict the corresponding impact of a drought event. This is due to the complex relationships between (multiple) drought indicators and adverse impacts across different places/hydroclimatic conditions, sectors, and spatiotemporal scales. In this study, we explored these relationships by analyzing the impacts of the severe 2018–2019 central E…
Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption
Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use. Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically and politically disadvantaged. Here we show how social inequalities across different groups or individuals play a major role in the producti…
The wider the gap between rich and poor the higher the flood mortality
Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence the social vulnerability to natural hazards. We analysed income inequality and flood disasters in 67 middle- and high-income countries between 1990 and 2018 and found that unequal countries tend to suffer more flood fatalities. This study integrates geocoded mortality records from 573 major flood disasters with population and economic data to perfor…
Disaster risk reduction and the limits of truisms: Improving the knowledge and practice interface
Action toward strengthened disaster risk reduction (DRR) ideally builds from evidence-based policymaking to inform decisions and priorities. This is a guiding principle for the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), which outlines priorities for action to reduce disaster risk. However, some of these practical guidelines conceal oversimplified or unsubstantiated claims and assumptions, what we refer to as ‘truisms’, which, if not pr…
Drought and society: Scientific progress, blind spots, and future prospects
Human activities have increasingly intensified the severity, frequency, and negative impacts of droughts in several regions across the world. This trend has led to broader scientific conceptualizations of drought risk that account for human actions and their interplays with natural systems. This review focuses on physical and engineering sciences to examine the way and extent to which these disciplines account for social processes in relation to …
Multiform flood risk in a rapidly changing world: What we do not do, what we should and why it matters
DA_INSERIRE
Streamflow droughts aggravated by human activities despite management
Human activities both aggravate and alleviate streamflow drought. Here we show that aggravation is dominant in contrasting cases around the world analysed with a consistent methodology. Our 28 cases included different combinations of human-water interactions. We found that water abstraction aggravated all drought characteristics, with increases of 20%–305% in total time in drought found across the case studies, and increases in total deficit of u…
Do the Benefits of School Closure Outweigh Its Costs
School closure has been a common response to COVID-19. Yet, its implementation has hardly ever been based on rigorous analysis of its costs and benefits. We aim to first illustrate the unintended consequences and side effects of school closure, and then discuss the policy and research implications. This commentary frames evidence from the most recent papers on the topic from a public-health epidemiology and disaster risk reduction perspective. In…
Social-ecological system approaches for water resources management
In the era of the Anthropocene, understanding the dynamic interactions between humans and water is crucial for supporting both human well-being and the sustainable management of resources. The current water management challenges are inherently unpredictable and difficult to control. Social-ecological systems (SESs) approaches explicitly recognize the connections and feedbacks between human and natural systems. For addressing the complex challenge…
The legacy of large dams in the United States
The sustainability of large dams has been questioned on several grounds. One aspect that has been less explored is that the development of dams and reservoirs often enables agricultural expansion and urban growth, which in turn increase water consumption. As such, dam development influences, while being influenced by, the spatial and temporal distribution of both supply and demand of water resources. In this paper, we explore the interplay betwee…
Water management, hydrological extremes, and society: Modeling Interactions and Phenomena
Mazzoleni, M., V. Odongo, E. Mondino, and G. Di Baldassarre. 2021. Water management, hydrological extremes, and society: modeling interactions and phenomena. Ecology and Society 26(4):4. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12643-260404
Extreme dry and wet spells face changes in their duration and timing
Dry spells are sequences of days without precipitation. They can have negative implications for societies, including water security and agriculture. For example, changes in their duration and within-year timing can pose a threat to food production and wildfire risk. Conversely, wet spells are sequences of days with precipitation above a certain threshold, and changes in their duration and within-year timing can impact agriculture, flooding or the…
Sociohydrology: Scientific Challenges in Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 represent an ambitious blueprint to reduce inequalities globally and achieve a sustainable future for all mankind. Meeting the SDGs for water requires an integrated approach to managing and allocating water resources, by involving all actors and stakeholders, and considering how water resources link different sectors of society. To date, water management practice is domina…
Water shortages worsened by reservoir effects
Drought in the Anthropocene
Socio-hydrology: Conceptualising human-flood interactions
Over history, humankind has tended to settle near streams because of the role of rivers as transportation corridors and the fertility of riparian areas. However, human settlements in floodplains have been threatened by the risk of flooding. Possible responses have been to resettle away and/or modify the river system by building flood control structures. This has led to a complex web of interactions and feedback mechanisms between hydrological and…
Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption
Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use. Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically and politically disadvantaged. Here we show how social inequalities across different groups or individuals play a major role in the producti…
All dried up: The materiality of drought in Ladismith, South Africa
This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping drought, along with the agency of biophysical processes - soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate - that c…
Pluralising the materiality of water: More-than-water, lively waters, water with, and the agency of hydro-social assemblages
This special issue combines insights from an array of theoretical perspectives, including political ecology, Indigenous studies, and more-than-human and feminist geographies to engage with a critical question for water studies: What are the theoretical, empirical and methodological implications of a closer engagement with the matter and properties of water and infrastructure? To answer this question, the contributions draw on a geographically and…
Water shortages worsened by reservoir effects
The wider the gap between rich and poor the higher the flood mortality
Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence the social vulnerability to natural hazards. We analysed income inequality and flood disasters in 67 middle- and high-income countries between 1990 and 2018 and found that unequal countries tend to suffer more flood fatalities. This study integrates geocoded mortality records from 573 major flood disasters with population and economic data to perfor…
The legacy of large dams in the United States
The sustainability of large dams has been questioned on several grounds. One aspect that has been less explored is that the development of dams and reservoirs often enables agricultural expansion and urban growth, which in turn increase water consumption. As such, dam development influences, while being influenced by, the spatial and temporal distribution of both supply and demand of water resources. In this paper, we explore the interplay betwee…
Socio-hydrology: Conceptualising human-flood interactions
Over history, humankind has tended to settle near streams because of the role of rivers as transportation corridors and the fertility of riparian areas. However, human settlements in floodplains have been threatened by the risk of flooding. Possible responses have been to resettle away and/or modify the river system by building flood control structures. This has led to a complex web of interactions and feedback mechanisms between hydrological and…
Drought in the Anthropocene
Water shortages worsened by reservoir effects
Sociohydrology: Scientific Challenges in Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 represent an ambitious blueprint to reduce inequalities globally and achieve a sustainable future for all mankind. Meeting the SDGs for water requires an integrated approach to managing and allocating water resources, by involving all actors and stakeholders, and considering how water resources link different sectors of society. To date, water management practice is domina…
Extreme dry and wet spells face changes in their duration and timing
Dry spells are sequences of days without precipitation. They can have negative implications for societies, including water security and agriculture. For example, changes in their duration and within-year timing can pose a threat to food production and wildfire risk. Conversely, wet spells are sequences of days with precipitation above a certain threshold, and changes in their duration and within-year timing can impact agriculture, flooding or the…
Social-ecological system approaches for water resources management
In the era of the Anthropocene, understanding the dynamic interactions between humans and water is crucial for supporting both human well-being and the sustainable management of resources. The current water management challenges are inherently unpredictable and difficult to control. Social-ecological systems (SESs) approaches explicitly recognize the connections and feedbacks between human and natural systems. For addressing the complex challenge…
The legacy of large dams in the United States
The sustainability of large dams has been questioned on several grounds. One aspect that has been less explored is that the development of dams and reservoirs often enables agricultural expansion and urban growth, which in turn increase water consumption. As such, dam development influences, while being influenced by, the spatial and temporal distribution of both supply and demand of water resources. In this paper, we explore the interplay betwee…
Water management, hydrological extremes, and society: Modeling Interactions and Phenomena
Mazzoleni, M., V. Odongo, E. Mondino, and G. Di Baldassarre. 2021. Water management, hydrological extremes, and society: modeling interactions and phenomena. Ecology and Society 26(4):4. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12643-260404
Disaster risk reduction and the limits of truisms: Improving the knowledge and practice interface
Action toward strengthened disaster risk reduction (DRR) ideally builds from evidence-based policymaking to inform decisions and priorities. This is a guiding principle for the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), which outlines priorities for action to reduce disaster risk. However, some of these practical guidelines conceal oversimplified or unsubstantiated claims and assumptions, what we refer to as ‘truisms’, which, if not pr…
Drought and society: Scientific progress, blind spots, and future prospects
Human activities have increasingly intensified the severity, frequency, and negative impacts of droughts in several regions across the world. This trend has led to broader scientific conceptualizations of drought risk that account for human actions and their interplays with natural systems. This review focuses on physical and engineering sciences to examine the way and extent to which these disciplines account for social processes in relation to …
Multiform flood risk in a rapidly changing world: What we do not do, what we should and why it matters
DA_INSERIRE
Streamflow droughts aggravated by human activities despite management
Human activities both aggravate and alleviate streamflow drought. Here we show that aggravation is dominant in contrasting cases around the world analysed with a consistent methodology. Our 28 cases included different combinations of human-water interactions. We found that water abstraction aggravated all drought characteristics, with increases of 20%–305% in total time in drought found across the case studies, and increases in total deficit of u…
Do the Benefits of School Closure Outweigh Its Costs
School closure has been a common response to COVID-19. Yet, its implementation has hardly ever been based on rigorous analysis of its costs and benefits. We aim to first illustrate the unintended consequences and side effects of school closure, and then discuss the policy and research implications. This commentary frames evidence from the most recent papers on the topic from a public-health epidemiology and disaster risk reduction perspective. In…
Living in a pandemic: A review of Covid-19 integrated risk management
Managing new and complex risks has been one of the greatest societal challenges. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments all over the world had to make urgent decisions to address a public health crisis. Such decisions had to consider the impacts of alternative options on the public health, citizens' behaviours, and countries' economies. However, most policies undertaken during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic were based primar…
Significant relationships between drought indicators and impacts for the 2018–2019 drought in Germany
Despite the scientific progress in drought detection and forecasting, it remains challenging to accurately predict the corresponding impact of a drought event. This is due to the complex relationships between (multiple) drought indicators and adverse impacts across different places/hydroclimatic conditions, sectors, and spatiotemporal scales. In this study, we explored these relationships by analyzing the impacts of the severe 2018–2019 central E…
Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption
Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use. Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically and politically disadvantaged. Here we show how social inequalities across different groups or individuals play a major role in the producti…
The wider the gap between rich and poor the higher the flood mortality
Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence the social vulnerability to natural hazards. We analysed income inequality and flood disasters in 67 middle- and high-income countries between 1990 and 2018 and found that unequal countries tend to suffer more flood fatalities. This study integrates geocoded mortality records from 573 major flood disasters with population and economic data to perfor…
Over-reliance on water infrastructure can hinder climate resilience in pastoral drylands
Extreme droughts are affecting millions of livestock farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, causing water shortages, famines, migration and fatalities. The construction of new small water infrastructures (SWIs), such as deep wells and boreholes, is increasingly supported by climate resilience programmes of non-governmental organizations and national governments to improve water availability for agro-pastoralists, especially as an emergency response to ex…
Risk perception of climate change and global crises: Influences of socio-economic drivers and political orientations
Climate change increasingly impacts health and livelihoods, with extreme climate events causing significant economic losses and health risks. Understanding how socio-economic drivers and political orientation influence public risk perception is key for effective climate policies. This study aims to show how gender, age, income, political orientation, education, and place of residence shape perceptions of climate change as compared to other global…
How good is my drought index? Evaluating predictability and ability to estimate impacts across Europe
Identifying drought indices that effectively predict future drought impacts remains a critical challenge in seasonal forecasting, as these indices provide the necessary actionable information that enables stakeholders to better anticipate and respond to drought-related challenges. This study evaluates how drought indices balance forecast skill and relevance for estimating impacts across Europe. Using European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forec…
A review of open data for studying global groundwater in social–ecological systems
Global data have served an integral role in characterizing large-scale groundwater systems, identifying their sustainability challenges, and informing on socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of groundwater. These insights have revealed groundwater as a dynamic component of the water cycle and social–ecological systems, leading to an expansion in groundwater science that increasingly focuses on groundwater’s interactions with ecological, socioe…
The interplay between the urban development of Rome (Italy) and the Tiber River floods: A review of two millennia of socio-hydrological history
The urban development of Rome (Italy) has been intertwined with the dynamics of the Tiber River since its foundation. In this review paper, we analyse more than 2500 years of flood history and urban development to untangle the dynamics of flood risk and assess the resulting socio-hydrological phenomena. Until the 1800s, urban dwellers living in the riparian areas of the Tiber River were accustomed to frequent flooding. From the 1900s, the constru…
All dried up: The materiality of drought in Ladismith, South Africa
This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping drought, along with the agency of biophysical processes - soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate - that c…
Pluralising the materiality of water: More-than-water, lively waters, water with, and the agency of hydro-social assemblages
This special issue combines insights from an array of theoretical perspectives, including political ecology, Indigenous studies, and more-than-human and feminist geographies to engage with a critical question for water studies: What are the theoretical, empirical and methodological implications of a closer engagement with the matter and properties of water and infrastructure? To answer this question, the contributions draw on a geographically and…
Beyond profit: Modelling the socio-hydrological impacts of agricultural insurance and drought adaptation
Agricultural insurance is promoted as a drought-risk tool, yet its net long-term socio-hydrological impacts and interactions with other adaptations remain disputed. We expand the Geographical, Environmental and Behavioural model (GEB), a fully distributed hydrological model coupled with an agent-based model (ABM), a process-based crop model and a dynamic farmer adaptation behavior model. We add two adaptation options (wells, crop switching) and t…
Environmental Science (16 works) · Geography (14 works) · Flood Risk Assessment and Management (12 works) · Ecology (9 works) · Environmental resource management (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Hydrology and Drought Analysis (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Water resources management and optimization (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works)