Luciana Scrinzi

Luciana is a PlanAdapt Fellow based in Brussels, Belgium.

She is a water resources advisor specialized in groundwater management and the sustainable use of natural resources in a context of climate change. Her main areas of expertise are hydro(geo)logy, water governance, ecology and land use planning.

Luciana is passionate about conducting applied research, engaging with stakeholders and supporting impactful projects in the interphase between science, policy and practice. Her research interests include the interactions of climate vulnerability components with climate hazards, the integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches for decision-making and knowledge production, and the implementation of nature-based techniques in water resources management. She is especially interested in the search and transfer of solutions that tackle droughts and floods to foster more sustainable and safer access to water, especially in rural socio-ecosystems.

Prior to joining PlanAdapt, she has over four years of professional experience cooperating with international organizations, governments, local communities, research institutes and the private sector. Her work has included conducting surface and groundwater resources assessments, modelling hydrological systems and guiding decision-making in developing countries. While working at UNESCO, Luciana managed an SDC-funded project to improve water governance in target transboundary aquifers of Central America, Central Asia and Southern Africa. Before that, she worked as a scientific advisor at Deltares and Acacia Water, characterizing water resources at regional levels in Colombia and Sri Lanka (respectively) to identify threats and co-design plans with stakeholders for increased climate resilience.

Luciana holds a 2-year Joint MSc Degree in Water Sciences and Engeneering from IHE Delft, TU Dresden and IST Lisboa. For her MSc thesis she studied the dynamics of coastal lagoons in Sri Lanka, their interaction with shallow aquifers and their potential to sustain rural livelihoods through investments in water resources development. She also holds a 5-year BSc Degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires. She completed her BSc thesis with a research scholarship at the Agricultural Physiology and Ecology Research Institute, studying the long-term ecological response of dryland plant communities to soil cover changes in Patagonia (Argentina).

For more info, see Luciana’s LinkedIn page