UPC’s UNESCO Chair on Sustainability and INLAB present their joint work on participatory and responsible AI for water resilience at the XXVII CODIA in Zaragoza
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Dr. Jordi Morató, director of the Chair, and researcher Olga Lucía Sánchez Santander presented the results of this UPC collaboration in the Technical Dialogues of the Conference of Ibero-American Water Directors and Authorities, held October 14–16, 2026
This week Zaragoza hosted the 27th Conference of Ibero-American Water Directors and Authorities (CODIA), the forum that brings together those responsible for water management across Ibero-America. The meeting was organized by the Ebro River Basin Authority (Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro), chaired by Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), and supported by UNESCO and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). The program opened on October 14 with a high-level seminar on integrated water resources management from a river basin perspective, continued on October 15 with the Technical Dialogues, and closed on October 16 with working sessions of the national delegations and the adoption of agreements.
The UNESCO Chair on Sustainability at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) was represented in Zaragoza by its director, Dr. Jordi Morató, and researcher Olga Lucía Sánchez Santander. On October 15 they spoke in the second session of the Technical Dialogues with the presentation “Capacity development for water resilience: participatory and responsible AI for decision-making in the WEFE Nexus”.
The work presented is the result of a collaboration between two UPC groups: the UNESCO Chair on Sustainability and INLAB, the research group of UPC’s Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB). It has been coordinated by the two principal investigators, Dr. Jordi Morató for the UNESCO Chair and Pau Fonseca for INLAB, with the research work of Olga Lucía Sánchez Santander. The partnership combines the Chair’s experience in sustainability, the WEFE Nexus, and participatory work with local stakeholders with INLAB’s expertise in modeling, simulation, and digital twins.
From WEFE Nexus theory to action
The presentation started from a simple observation: the climate emergency is already a social emergency. Climate uncertainty, in both time and space, is lowering agricultural productivity and product quality, and it is sharpening conflicts over the use of resources. Against this background, the team addressed how to move from the conceptual framework of the Water–Energy–Food–Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus to solutions that work on the ground, and how to do so with artificial intelligence tools that do not operate as a “black box.”
The answer proposed by the UNESCO Chair and INLAB is AI co-designed with local stakeholders. Within the SURENEXUS project, funded by the PRIMA program, seven countries and fifteen institutions have deployed small-scale demonstrators of socio-ecological and technical systems based on bioeconomy solutions and nature-based solutions
To assess them, the two groups developed the AI WEFE Nexus tool: a digital twin built in the Specification and Description Language (SDL) and run on the SDLPS simulator within the NECADA environment, together with an Assumptions Document (ADoc) drafted through a transdisciplinary process. The ADoc makes every model assumption explicit and traceable, while the graphical representation of the system allows technical staff, managers, and communities to work from a shared basis.
Results from three demonstration sites
Three cases illustrated the approach. In Bir Ami (Tunisia), a desert area, the team studied solar-powered subsurface irrigation of olive groves, a patented Tunisian innovation, using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and heatmaps to select interventions. In Kenitra (Morocco), the model estimated irrigation requirements for citrus under different levels of plastic mulching: depending on mulching intensity, water savings compared with bare soil range from 27% to 43%. At the Codorníu winery (Penedès, Spain), a vertical-flow constructed wetland system using recycled cork treats about 48,440 m³ of water per year for reuse, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.
First results on El Niño in the tropical Andes
The first results of modeling the effect of El Niño on cacao in northern Cauca and strawberry in Paispamba (Colombia), obtained with the WEFE digital twin (NECADA/SDLPS) in collaboration with the Fundación Mundo Mujer of Popayán, Colombia, were also presented in Zaragoza. Under the most severe scenario, cacao irrigation requirements rise by 138%, and strawberry requirements increase twelvefold over the reference year. Under the El Niño scenarios, precision irrigation would reduce strawberry demand by 13% to 18%, and agroforestry shade would reduce cacao demand by 34% to 36%.
AI to support decisions, not replace them
A key message for the water authorities in the room was that these systems should support decision-makers, not replace them. Well designed, they make it possible to simulate climate and management scenarios, identify strategies that balance competing demands—such as irrigation versus hydropower generation—, detect unsustainable practices such as the overexploitation of shared aquifers, and provide an objective basis for dialogue across sectors and between countries.
The talk closed with a reflection on governance. The main barriers are not only technological: investment in capacity development is needed so that public administrations and local stakeholders can take ownership of these tools and then replicate and scale them to other basins and contexts. The UNESCO Chair and INLAB see this as a particularly promising area for collaboration with the Ibero-American water community, in line with the Chair’s ongoing cooperation work in Latin America.
More information
· XXVII CODIA: https://codia.info/eventos/xxvii-codia/
· SDLPS simulator: https://sdlps.com
· SURENEXUS model in SDLPS: https://sdlps.com/Experiments/ModelDocsPng/3039
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