Professor Francisco (Paco) Padilla Benítez, from the Department of Construction Engineering, University of A Coruña, Spain, has spent a sabbatical leave at the Wessex Institute where he developed several research initiatives.
Paco is an expert in hydrology and computational methods, and worked for some time at Laval University in Canada before taking his current appointment in Spain.
As a result of his stay, a series of multidisciplinary research and academic collaboration projects took place mainly in the field of sustainable water management and integrated modelling of water resources in continental and coastal watersheds.
In particular, Prof Padilla presented a Seminar concerning “Integrated Watershed Modelling” during April 2016. A research paper, entitled “Modelling integrated extreme hydrology” was submitted and accepted for publication in International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering and a manuscript entitled “On a numerical approximation and application to integrated extreme hydrology” was submitted for publication in the Water Resources Management Journal.
His ongoing research “Modelling integrated extreme hydrology” was presented as an Invited Lecture at FRIAR (5th International Conference on Flood Risk Management and Response) organised by the Wessex Institute, with the collaboration of the University of Padova and the Politecnico of Milano, in Venice, from 29 June-1 July 2016. Prof Padilla acted as a reviewer for papers in the field of water resources. Furthermore, during his stay he prepared and presented two research proposals, one for “Proyecto Retos, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Gobierno de España)” and the other to obtain a H2020 ERC Advanced Grant 2016 of the European Commission.
Paco’s stay has helped to consolidate the already well-established links between researchers at the University of A Coruña and their colleagues at the Wessex Institute.
Wessex Institute