SIRENA launches in Athens: the UNESCO Chair on Sustainability brings human-supervised AI to Mediterranean water resilience

The SIRENA consortium met in Athens on 1–3 July 2026 to launch a three-year PRIMA project focused on nature-based water resilience. The UNESCO Chair on Sustainability and Inlab group at UPC leads the development of the AI WEFE Nexus scenario-modelling tool and co-leads the participatory NbS selection widget, while four bilateral meetings opened new lines of technical and scientific cooperation.

The UNESCO Chair on Sustainability of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) took part in the kick-off meeting of SIRENA — Streamlining Nature-Based Solutions for Resilient and Sustainable Water Management in the Mediterranean Region — held in Athens on 1–3 July 2026 and hosted by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). Dr. Jordi Morató, Director of the Chair, and Olga Lucía Sánchez, Project Manager, represented UPC throughout the three-day meeting.

Funded under the PRIMA programme, SIRENA runs from June 2026 to May 2029 and is coordinated by NTUA, with Associate Prof. Simos Malamis as Coordinator and Prof. Costas Noutsopoulos as Technical Manager. The project responds to intensifying water and climate pressures across the Mediterranean. Within the project framing, summer rainfall may decline by up to 30%, temperatures may rise by as much as 3.8 °C by 2100, and more than 290 million people in the southern and eastern Mediterranean may face high water stress by mid-century. SIRENA therefore addresses not only the technical performance of nature-based solutions (NbS), but also the institutional, governance and financing barriers that limit their wider uptake.

From demonstration to upscaling

SIRENA places the transfer and upscaling of solutions at the centre of the project rather than treating it as a secondary outcome. Field activity is organised in three WaterMED Hubs, each pairing an Origin Lab — a territory where a nature-based solution is already mature — with an Implementation Lab, where that solution is adapted to a different climatic, economic and institutional setting.

Hub 1 links Mykonos, Greece, where integrated rainwater and stormwater harvesting supports aquifer recharge and irrigation, with Tunis, where the Ksar Said retention basin will be transformed into a multifunctional solution combining debris filtration, vegetated infiltration sub-basins and compact wetlands. Hub 2 links a multifunctional wetland system in rural Bologna with Guenfou, in the Fès-Meknès region of Morocco, where water scarcity and land degradation are addressed through rainwater basins, agroforestry and riparian restoration. Hub 3 links Osona, Catalonia, where hybrid NbS provide tertiary treatment at the Manlleu and Centelles wastewater treatment plants, with Hurghada, Egypt, where former stabilisation ponds are being converted into artificial wetlands.

Together, the hubs support four interconnected pillars: scalable nature-based systems for water resilience; stronger local capacities for participatory water management; policy frameworks for NbS uptake and a nature-positive economy; and digital tools for adaptive water planning. The project's central output is the Mediterranean Water Resilience Framework, conceived as a replicable governance blueprint and accompanied by the Mediterranean Water Resilience Atlas, a portfolio of adaptable solutions, a digital decision-support platform and a Community of Practice.

Ten partners across seven Mediterranean countries

SIRENA brings together ten partners from Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. NTUA coordinates the project; SEMIDE leads capacity building, policy alignment and business models; BETA Technological Center (UVic-UCC) leads water resilience impact assessment and the Catalan lab; and the University of Bologna leads the knowledge-base work and the Italian lab. Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah coordinates the Moroccan lab and contributes to socio-cultural impact and co-creation, while Environmental Without Borders Foundation supports the Egyptian lab and co-leads communication. WECEN contributes to policy recommendations, WEFE impact assessment and exploitation. On the digital side, CogniSensus leads the SIRENA data platform, while UPC leads the AI WEFE Nexus scenario-modelling tool and co-leads, with CogniSensus, the participatory NbS selection widget. The Tunisian partner, the Institut Supérieur des Sciences Biologiques Appliquées de Tunis (ISSBAT), is led in SIRENA by Prof. Atef Jaouani. ISSBAT brings expertise in constructed wetlands and leads the work package coordinating the six WaterMED Labs and the portfolio of implemented solutions. It also operates the Tunisian Implementation Lab in cooperation with national authorities.

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What UPC brings: human-supervised AI for WEFE Nexus decisions

The UNESCO Chair on Sustainability contributes its experience in AI-based assessment of the Water–Energy–Food–Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus, with particular emphasis on nature-based solutions, circular economy and economic evaluation. Within the digital work package, UPC leads the task that enhances, adapts and optimises the WEFE Nexus AI scenario-modelling tool developed under the SURENEXUS project, also funded by PRIMA. The tool supports the construction of context-specific scenarios, incorporates the technical characterisation of a broad portfolio of NbS and circular-economy options, and helps compare their implications across multiple WEFE criteria.

During the "Meet the partners" session, Dr. Morató presented the UPC team assigned to SIRENA — José Luis Martin Bordes on policy, Brent Villanueva on circular economy and Dr. Pau Fonseca on artificial intelligence, alongside Olga Lucía Sánchez on WEFE Nexus and himself — and highlighted a principle that the Chair proposed as the reference position for the consortium: the tool is human-supervised. AI supports technology pre-screening, scenario exploration and the analysis of trade-offs; final decisions remain with experts and with the stakeholders involved in the co-design process.

A second contribution from UPC concerned the architecture of monitoring. The delegation argued that action plans and systematic monitoring should be connected to the digital solutions and the data platform from the outset, rather than retrofitted once plans are complete. Economic, social, cultural and policy dimensions should be formalised with the same rigour as technical dimensions so that they can be computed, compared across labs and represented consistently in the dashboards used by decision-makers.

“Artificial intelligence can help us identify which combinations of solutions perform best against a given set of criteria and make visible trade-offs that might otherwise be missed. What it cannot do is decide for the territory. That is why we insist that the tool is human-supervised: decisions belong to experts and to the people who will live with their consequences.” — Dr. Jordi Morató, Director of the UNESCO Chair on Sustainability (UPC)

Next steps

The Chair will prepare a short methodological note for an AI-assisted policy inventory able to compile and structure water-related policy from the countries involved in the WaterMED Hubs, together with relevant European-level policy, for comparative analysis within the capacity-building and policy-alignment work led by SEMIDE.

The meeting concluded on 3 July at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center with the first integrated workshop between the WaterMED Hubs. The labs began the alignment process needed to establish shared terminology, comparable baselines and common monitoring variables. The template for action plans and systematic monitoring will be circulated to the consortium for comment before adoption.

There is also scope to analyse the potential of ancestral hydrotechnologies as locally adapted, low-energy solutions for climate adaptation and water resilience across Mediterranean territories. Traditional systems for rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge, water storage and gravity-fed irrigation could be assessed alongside contemporary Nature-based Solutions. This could also include dry-stone terrace systems found on Greek islands such as Andros, which help slow runoff, reduce soil erosion, retain soil moisture and enhance infiltration in steep, water-scarce landscapes. Such approaches would allow ancestral knowledge to be evaluated under current climatic conditions and incorporated into the SIRENA digital and WEFE Nexus assessment frameworks..