Jorge Gironás

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Verified

Jorge verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• MS and PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Urban impervious surfaces reduce infiltration, limit storage capacity, and alter natural drainage pathways, which not only increase peak flows and runoff volumes but also disrupt the overall hydrologic regime. To address these challenges, there is a growing need for effective methods to promote the implementation of Sustainable Urban Drainage Syste...

Drought is a complex phenomenon that affects the development and use of the country’s water resources. Characterization through indices is critical in planning, management, and decision-making to mitigate the effects of drought, mainly when these are implemented in online platforms for monitoring, warning, and tracking the phenomenon. These tools s...

Water uses may be threatened by hydrochemical shifts that are triggered by droughts. Reduced rainfall, streamflow, and temperature fluctuations may induce distinct changes in salinity, suspended solids, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, organic matter, nutrient cycling, pH, stratification, and hydraulic residence times. The extent of these variations is...

Drought is a multifaceted and unpredictable climate event with profound effects on ecosystems, communities, and economies. This chapter explores the nature of drought, its origins, and provides definitions tailored to various affected systems. Additionally, it presents related concepts while addressing potential misunderstandings and their conseque...

One of the expected impacts of climate change is the alteration of precipitation and temperatures, modifying hydrological regimes and water availability. Faced with these changes, it is essential to adopt measures to guarantee the quantity, quality and continuity of drinking water supply to the population. This chapter proposes an instrument that c...

Climate change is causing widespread extreme weather events around the world, affecting food and water security. One example is Chile, which is facing the longest drought in its history. To cope with this situation, adaptation measures such as option contracts have been explored. This type of contract allows the temporary transfer of water from one...

Wetlands play a significant role in preventing floods and providing access to nature in urban contexts, among many other benefits. However, in southern Chile, they have been severely threatened by an urban growth paradigm that has traditionally overlooked the valuable ecosystem services they provide. This has led to frequent flooding, water quality...

Primera parte de un documento que sintetiza la investigación y el trabajo de CEDEUS sobre aguas grises

Segunda parte de un documento que sintetiza la investigación y el trabajo de CEDEUS sobre aguas grises

A coding package called climQMBC (climatic variables Quantile Mapping Bias Correction), written in R, Python, and MATLAB, which implemented five quantile mapping methods: QM (Standard Quantile Mapping), DQM (Detrended Quantile Mapping), QDM (Quantile Delta Mapping), SDM (Scale Distribution Mapping) and UQM (Unbiased Quantile Mapping). The methods i...

A medida que la población crece y se expone a amenazas más dañinas y frecuentes en un clima cambiante, las naciones deben adaptarse y decidir bien qué, cómo y dónde construir. Para esto, se requiere una mirada integrada e informada de todas las amenazas que acechan al territorio, y así planificar soluciones de adaptación para la infraestructura pre...

El evento hidrometeorológico del 21 al 26 de junio de 2023 afectó la zona centro-sur de Chile y dejó inundaciones en diferentes ciudades. Durante este evento, hubo cuencas que presentaron un aumento significativo de la escorrentía, producto de la precipitación líquida ocurrida en zonas precordilleranas con altas temperaturas. Para entender este de...

El crecimiento de la población urbana, junto con el cambio climático, está estresando las fuentes convencionales de agua dulce. Gran parte del agua que se consume domiciliariamente, tras su tratamiento en plantas de aguas residuales, se desecha sin darle otros usos. Nuevas estrategias de gestión de las aguas residuales, como su reúso, pueden genera...

Achieving sustainability and resilience depends on the conciliation of environmental, social, and economic issues integrated into a long-term perspective to ensure communities flourish. Many nations are transitioning toward both objectives, while at the same time addressing structural concerns that have not allowed them to look after the environmen...

Standard quantile mapping (QM) performs well, as a bias adjustment method, in removing historical climate biases, but it can significantly alter Global Climate Model (GCM) signal. Methods that do incorporate GCM changes, commonly consider mean changes only. Quantile delta mapping (QDM) is an exception, as it explicitly preserves relative changes in...

Various dispersion mechanisms are known to link the spatial heterogeneity of the basin morphology and flow dynamics to the hydrologic response. Recent studies have conducted spatial analysis of the kinematic and geomorphological dispersion coefficients that characterize these mechanisms, as well as identified the influence of hillslopes, channels,...

Recently, living walls and vegetative roofs have emerged as envelope technologies that can save energy owing to the cooling effects of the building envelope. However, simulation models are required as part of the design support tools available for sizing greenery systems according to architectural constraints and climate. In this study, a green roo...

Los métodos de quantile mapping (mapeo de cuantiles) se utilizan comúnmente para corregir sesgos (BC) de la precipitación y temperatura de los modelos de circulación general (GCM). Aunque funcionan bien para eliminar el sesgo de la media y desviación estándar histórica, se ha demostrado que estos métodos distorsionan las tasas de cambios de los GCM...

A coding package called climQMBC (climatic variables Quantile Mapping Bias Correction), written in R, Python, and MATLAB, which implemented five quantile mapping methods: QM (Standard Quantile Mapping), DQM (Detrended Quantile Mapping), QDM (Quantile Delta Mapping), SDM (Scale Distribution Mapping) and UQM (Unbiased Quantile Mapping), and produces...

Timely and reliable drought detection is the basis for sustainable drought management, which aims to keep negative impacts to a minimum. Droughts are natural and recurring events and as such cannot be avoided. Ensuring future preparedness relies on knowledge of past events. Drought indices are commonly used to detect drought events, among them stan...

The residential reuse of greywater has attracted interest in recent years as a strategy to face water security problems. Nowadays, some cities such as Santiago de Chile are seeking to promote new laws that allow residential greywater reuse and make the incorporation of the necessary infrastructure (machinery and a parallel pipe system) mandatory fo...

Anthropogenic land use changes have taken place through time, and will continue in the future as the country develops. Such changes have affected the occurrence of hydrological processes, and impacted water resources. This chapter describes these changes and their evolution through time. Urban and population growth, expansion and intensification of...

In this chapter, spatial and temporal patterns of temperature, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration along Chile are shown and analyzed in detail. Data obtained from gridded maps provided by the Centro de Ciencia del Clima y la Resiliencia (CR2), as well as 874 precipitation stations and 376 thermometric stations belonging to the Dirección...

Droughts are extreme hydrological events that can be observed in the lower tail of the probability distribution describing water resources at a point. As a natural random phenomenon of an accidental nature, they are complex phenomena, and their properties cannot be totally anticipated. In this chapter we review the special characteristics of drough...

Water-related challenges involve aspects of scientific hydrology and water resources management. We studied research projects funded by the State of Chile through different institutional funds in the last 20 years to identify scientific challenges for hydrology in Chile, which are mainly related to the understanding of the water cycle and infrastru...

Due to its particular geographic and climatic characteristics, Chile is periodically affected by floods that in many cases have produced significant socioeconomic impacts. Furthermore, there is a national concern about whether or not the frequency and magnitude of these events will increase in the future due to climate change. This chapter presents...

Chile, the country for which this book was prepared, is located on the southwestern region of South America, between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes. This profile briefly describes the main features of the country, including its geographical and climatic attributes, as well as general aspects about its administration, demography and economy. Finall...

The reuse of treated greywater in a residential setting could contribute substantially to easing problems with water scarcity. This paper argues that preferences in relation to reusing greywater for different uses within the home vary across households and can be driven at least in part by psychological constructs, such as attitudes and perceptions...

Chile is a privileged country in terms of water resources, with an average annual runoff of approximately 50,000 m3/person. However, water availability varies enormously in space, as less than 1,000 m³/person are available for more than 50% of the population. The temporal and spatial distribution of water resources is driven by processes highly var...

Climate change is modifying the way we design and operate water infrastructure, including reservoirs. A particular issue is that current infrastructure and reservoir management rules will likely operate under changing conditions different to those used in their design. Thus, there is a big need to identify the obsolescence of current operation rule...

Growing urban development, combined with the influence of El Niño and climate change, has increased the threat of large unprecedented floods induced by extreme precipitation in populated areas near mountain regions of South America. High-fidelity numerical models with physically based formulations can now predict inundations with a substantial leve...

To legally permit greywater reuse as a management strategy, it is necessary to establish allowed uses, as well as guarantee legitimacy, safety and maintain public trust. Cities with previous experience in greywater reuse have reconfigured their regulations according to their own evidence with decentralized water reuse systems. This has allowed them...

The spatial distribution of surface air temperatures is essential for understanding and modelling high‐relief environments. Good estimations of the surface temperature lapse rate (STLR) and the 0°C isotherm height (H0) are fundamental for hydrological modelling in mountainous basins. Although STLR changes in space and time, it is typically assumed...

Greywater reuse can allow substantial improvements in the efficiency of potable water systems. However, widespread uptake of greywater reuse depends on its acceptability by the population. Previous studies have assessed the implementation costs of greywater reuse technology, and considered its acceptability in principle. Although cost is clearly ve...

Sewer systems affect urban soil characteristics and subsoil water flow. The direct connection observed between baseflow in sewer systems under drainage infiltrations and piezometric levels influences the hydrological behavior of urban catchments, and must consequently be considered in the hydrologic modeling of urban areas. This research studies th...

Unit hydrographs (UHs) remain widely used in hydrologic modeling to predict the stormflow that is produced at a basin outlet in response to runoff generated throughout the basin. Numerous studies have demonstrated that a basin’s UH depends on its geomorphic properties, and several methods estimate synthetic UHs using such properties. However, previ...

Abstract. Growing urban development, combined with the influence of El Niño and climate change, have increased the threat of large unprecedented floods induced by extreme precipitation in populated areas near mountain regions of South America. High-fidelity numerical models with physically-based formulations can now predict inundations with a subst...

Water, food, and energy (WFE) are critical resources that are intimately linked, as their production requires the other resources as input and changes impacting one of these resources can affect the others as well. For this reason, the WFE nexus concept was coined in order to represent this inextricable connection. In addition to the demands betwee...

Decision making and hydrologic design for coping with floods are complex tasks in poorly gauged high-relief basins. The response of such basins is driven by precipitation and temperature, which controls the freezing level elevation and size of the runoff-contributing area. Moreover, early warning of floods based solely on real-time in situ monitori...

Droughts are natural phenomena that severely affect socio economic and ecological systems. In Chile, population and economic activities are highly concentrated in its central region (i.e. between latitudes 29°S and 40°S), which periodically suffers from severe droughts affecting agriculture, hydropower, and mining. Understanding the dynamics of dro...

As complex systems, urban stormwater networks (USNs) may reveal emergent features (e.g., scaling) and sudden changes in behavior, which can lead to unanticipated impacts. We explored this through the USN properties of connectivity, heterogeneity, and scaling, which were quantified using outputs from a hydrological model and network dispersion mecha...

Subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) water quantity and quality forecasts are needed to support decision and policy making in multiple sectors, e.g., hydropower, agriculture, water supply, and flood control. Traditionally, S2S climate forecasts for hydroclimatic variables (e.g., precipitation) have been characterized by low predictability. Since recent ne...

The availability of reliable meteorological records is crucial for the development of a number of environmental studies. Unfortunately, these records are not always complete, usually show errors and/or have an insufficient length. This paper presents a gap filling and data record extension methodology for minimum temperature, maximum temperature, a...

Spatially distributed travel time (SDTT) methods have been developed as an alternative to semidistributed and fully distributed methods for rainfall‐runoff modeling. In these methods, the travel times of grid cells are summed along flow paths and then convoluted to generate the hydrograph at the outlet. One central aspect of SDTT models that remain...

The time at which climate change signal can be clearly distinguished from noise is known as time of emergence (ToE) and is typically detected by a general circulation model (GCM) signal-to-noise ratio exceeding a certain threshold. ToE is commonly estimated at large scales from GCMs, although management decisions and adaptation strategies are imple...

Drainage network types give indications of the landscape evolution processes and the lithologic and structural conditions that produced them. Moreover, drainage network attributes affect the hydrologic response of basins. Several network types have been identified through visual inspection and, more recently, through quantitative methods developed...

The impact of urbanization on groundwater is not simple to understand, as it depends on a variety of factors such as climate, hydrogeology, water management practices, and infrastructure. In semiarid landscapes, the urbanization processes can involve high water consumptions and irrigation increases, which in turn may contribute to groundwater recha...

Multi-hazard evaluations are fundamental inputs for disaster risk management plans and the implementation of resilient urban environments, adapted to extreme natural events. Risk assessments from natural hazards have been typically restricted to the analysis of single hazards or focused on the vulnerability of specific targets, which might result i...

Detecting droughts as early as possible is important in avoiding negative impacts on economy, society, and environment. To improve drought monitoring, we studied drought propagation (i.e., the temporal manifestation of a precipitation deficit on soil moisture and streamflow). We used the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), S...

Many cities are facing water shortages because of climate change. Climate adaptation plans have prioritized water saving to prevent the devastating consequences of drought. To develop such adaptation plans, it is critical to understand the water-use patterns of cities. The present research determines the water consumption for irrigation of green sp...

2D non-uniform polygonal meshes allow representation of the impact of landscape elements and small infrastructures on water flows. The initial vectorial mesh, derived from the intersection of several geographical information systems f layers, can have highly non-convex or sliver polygons. These bad-shaped elements compromise accurate numerical flow...

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model has been successfully used in weather prediction, but its ability to simulate precipitation over areas with complex topography is not optimal. Consequently, WRF has problems forecasting rainfall events over Chilean mountainous terrain and foothills, where some of the main cities are located, and wher...

Accounting for climate change, GCM-based projections and their uncertainty are relevant to study potential impacts on hydrological regimes as well as to analyze, operate, and design water infrastructure. Traditionally, several downscaled and/or bias-corrected GCM projections are individually or jointly used to map the raw GCMs' changes to local sta...

In the last two decades, the incorporation of green roofs and living walls in buildings has increased significantly worldwide because of their benefits such as building energy savings, promoting biodiversity, controlling water run-off, mitigating urban heat island effect, improving indoor and urban air quality, and connecting people with nature. Ho...

This chapter presents a module implemented in QGIS, belonging to the GEO-PUMMA toolbox. This plugin allows a triangulation of surface elements with a vectorial format, and thus the segmentation of a mesh composed of heterogeneous polygons. This module allows the generation of vectorial meshes for the representation of urban and peri-urban landscape...

Green roofs offer a series of benefits to buildings and to the urban environment. Their use in dry climates requires optimizing the choice of their components (i.e., vegetation, substrate and drainage layer) for the specific local climatic conditions, in order to minimize irrigations needs while preserving the attributes of the roof. In this study,...

Stochastic weather simulation, or weather generators (WGs), have gained a wide acceptance and been used for a variety of purposes, including climate change studies and the evaluation of climate variability and uncertainty effects. The two major challenges in WGs are improving the estimation of interannual variability and reducing overdispersion in...

Rapid floods induced by extreme precipitation are common events in regions near the Andes mountain range. Growing urban development, combined with the changing climate and the influence of El Niño, have increased the exposure of the population in many regions of South America. Simulations of flash floods in these watersheds are very challenging, du...

L'accroissement de la population et le développement économique ont conduit à une augmentation de l'urbanisation et à la transformation de zones rurales en paysages urbanisés. Ceci induit un certain nombre de problèmes liés à la gestion de l'eau [XIA 07]. Parmi les principaux problèmes associés à l'urbanisation, on peut mettre en avant l'augmentati...

L'accroissement de la population et le développement économique ont conduit à une augmentation de l'urbanisation et à la transformation de zones rurales en paysages urbanisés. Ceci induit un certain nombre de problèmes liés à la gestion de l'eau [XIA 07]. Parmi les principaux problèmes associés à l'urbanisation, on peut mettre en avant l'augmentati...

ESTA PUBLICACIÓN REÚNE 17 DOCUMENTOS PARA POLÍTICA PÚBLICA CON MIRADAS LOCALES SOBRE LA NUEVA AGENDA URBANA DE LA ONU QUE BUSCA SER UN APORTE A LA DISCUSIÓN DE LA CALIDAD DE VIDA EN LAS CIUDADES CHILENAS. CEDEUS es un centro interdisciplinario de investigación que busca la generación e intercambio de conocimiento con el fin de enfrentar los desafío...

River mouths and coastal lagoons in central Chile are some of the most dynamic ecosystems in the country. They are controlled by a great variety of natural and anthropic factors, which have confer these ecosystems a high environmental and human value. The diversity of these ecosystems is mainly due to a complex set of parameters that define them: f...

Impervious areas change hydrological processes, reducing infiltration and evapotranspiration, and increasing direct runoff. Stormwater practices using green infrastructure are implemented locally to control runoff and preserve the hydrological cycle. Applying these techniques in semiarid and Mediterranean regions requires accounting for aspects rel...

Reclaimed water is receiving growing attention worldwide as an effective solution for alleviating the growing water scarcity in many areas. Despite the various benefits associated with reclaimed water, water recycling and reuse (WR&R) practices are not widely applied around the world. This is mostly due to complex and inadequate local legal and ins...

Flowpaths are significantly affected by land use change and engineered elements across urban catchments. Conventional GIS-based tools for extracting drainage networks were not developed for urban terrains. This work presents Geo-PUMMA, a GIS toolbox to generate vectorial meshes for terrain representation in distributed hydrological modeling, and to...

Buildings play an important role in energy use and greenhouse emissions. Vegetated roofs, so-called green roofs, offers many benefits beyond energy savings. Among different building types, retail stores with flat and large roof/walls ratio, offers a match for this technology. Despite this potential in retail stores the literature review shows a lac...

Core Ideas Hydrodynamic and thermal properties of five green roof substrates were determined. Coupled heat and water transport in a hypothetical roof was simulated. The green roof substrates showed a large capacity to store and transport water. Water retention, storage, and organic matter control substrate hydraulic behavior. Green roofs integrate...

In the face of high-impact, but uncertain, environmental changes likely to affect the supply and demand of water resources, societies are discussing the need to adapt to such changes and considering their available options to do so. Inspired by a decision-analysis approach called robust decisionmaking (RDM), a collaborative science-policy dialogue...

The need to understand and simulate hydrological phenomena and their interactions, and the impact of anthropogenic and climate changes on natural environments have promoted the study of evaporation from bare soils in arid climates. In closed Altiplano basins, such as those encountered in arid and hyper arid basins in northern Chile, evaporation fro...

In March 2015 unusual ocean and atmospheric conditions produced many years’ worth of rainfall in a ~48-hour period over northern Chile's Atacama Desert, one of Earth's driest regions, resulting in catastrophic flooding. Here we describe the hydrologic and geomorphic drivers of and responses to the 2015 Atacama floods. In the Salado River, we estima...

Stream flow rates with seasonal, daily, or hourly cycles due to freezing and thawing can control downstream chemical processes by changing the mixing ratio of reactive flows. The extent of these hydrologic-chemical interactions has not been fully realized yet. This work explored the link between daily freeze-thaw cycles and the fate and transport o...

Considering water resource scarcity and uncertainty in climate and demand futures, decision-makers require techniques for sustainability analysis in resource management. Through unclear definitions of “sustainability”, however, traditional indices for resource evaluation propose options of limited flexibility by adopting static climate and demand s...

Streamflow can be drastically perturbed in urban basins with important implications for stream, floodplain, and riparian ecosystems. Normally, the dynamic influence of urbanization on streamflow is studied via space-for-time substitution. Here we explicitly consider urban growth when determining the flow regime of 14 urban basins. To synthetically...

This paper modifies the traditional representation of the water–food–energy (WFE) nexus by emphasizing the flows or influences between components. This allows a better representation of the dynamic nature of the WFE nexus in response to global change drivers. It applies a conceptual figure to synthesize the status and future challenges of the nexus...

Closed basins are catchments whose drainage networks converge to lakes, salt flats or alluvial plains. Salt flats in the closed basins in arid northern Chile are extremely important ecological niches. The Salar del Huasco, one of these salt flats located in the high plateau (Altiplano), is a Ramsar site located in a national park and is composed of...

Cities are hotspots of commodity consumption, with implications for both local and systemic water resources. Water flows “virtually” into and out of cities through the extensive cross-boundary exchange of goods and services. Both virtual and real water flows are affected by water supply investments and urban planning decisions, which influence resi...

Each year, urban populations become larger and new buildings are needed to house them; consequently, urban green areas are reduced and hard surface density in cities is increased all over the planet. This increase in hard surfaces, such as concrete and metal, is one of the main responsible for the increment of urban temperatures, also known as the...

The aim of this paper is to study the influence of different parameters related to the vegetation and substrate of vegetated roofs (VRs) on the thermal and energy performance of a supermarket building. The main studied parameters of the substrate are density, thermal properties and moisture content while the evaluated vegetation parameters are plan...

Green roofs integrate vegetation into infrastructures to reach benefits that minimize negative impacts of the urbanization. Green roofs use artificial soils (substrates) that have an improved performance compared to natural soils. In this work, we characterized four substrates in terms of their hydraulic and thermal properties, and performed numeri...

The aim of this study is to address the problem of balance between water scarcity and sustainability, which are the key components of water security of cities located in arid lands, particularly those under constant expansion and population growth. In this paper, we have highlighted the problem of water security for the sustainability of the La Ser...

This volume is the second in a series on water, published in both Spanish and English, and intended to reach a wide policy audience. The first volume offered a broad assessment of the status of water resources in the Americas. This second volume addresses the fundamental problem of urban water challenges. The Hemisphere of the Americas is among the...

Most climate projections predict that average surface temperature and precipitation variability will increase at the global scale, triggering hydrological variations and alterations in river flows and groundwater table levels. Climate change impacts on freshwater resources are likely to affect freshwater availability and quality and by extension, t...

Hydrologic fluxes in mountainous watersheds are particularly important as these areas often provide a significant source of freshwater for more arid surrounding lowlands. The state of Colorado in the United States comprises a principal snow catchment area, with all major headwater river basins in Colorado providing substantial water flows to surrou...

The Metropolitan Region (M.R.) in Chile is populated by over 6 million people and supplied by the Maipo River and its large number of irrigation channels. Potential environmental alterations caused by global change will extremely affect managers and users of water resources in this semi-arid basin. These hydro-climatological impacts combined with d...

Hydrologic fluxes in mountainous watersheds are particularly important as these areas often provide a significant source of freshwater for more arid surrounding lowlands. The state of Colorado in the United States comprises a principal snow catchment area, with all major headwater river basins in Colorado providing substantial water flows to surrou...

Previous studies have examined in-depth the dispersion mechanisms in natural catchments. In contrast, these dispersion mechanisms have been studied little in urban catchments, where artificial transport elements and morphological arrangements are expected to modify travel times and mobilize excess rainfall from spatially distributed impervious site...