Dr. Alain Pietroniro
Positions
Professor
Schulich School of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering
Affiliations
Momentum Director inEngineering for a Sustainable Future
Schulich School of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering
Canada Research Chair- Tier 1 - Sustainable Water Systems in a Changing Climate
Schulich School of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering
Contact information
For media enquiries, contact
Joe McFarland
Media Relations and Communications Specialist
Cell: +1.403.671.2710
Email: Joe.Mcfarland@ucalgary.ca
Preferred method of communication
Background
Biography
Dr. Alain Pietroniro is an internationally recognized expert in hydrology and sustainable water systems, who has spent almost three decades studying water resources engineering. A full Professor of Civil Engineering at University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, Dr. Pietroniro’s research is focused on improving, developing and evaluating hydrologic models, understanding the sensitivity of water resources to climate variability and change, and developing the next generation of hydrological modelling systems. Dr. Pietroniro is the former Executive Director for the National Hydrological Service within the Meteorological Service of Canada, which included the management of the Water Survey of Canada. Those duties focused on managing the operations of the WSC which included over 2300 hydrometric stations and 11 agreements with the provinces and territories. It also included engineering services related to both the hydrometric measurements, water management and governance programs of the MSC, including carrying out orders outlined in 14 US/Canada bi-national water treaties that are overseen by the International Joint Commission. He had been in that position from 2006-2020, and before that was a research scientist at the National Hydrology Research Institute for 15 years. He has overseen model development, leading or managing work related to hydraulic modelling, coupled numerical weather modelling and development of a space-based hydrology plan. Over the course of his career, Dr. Pietroniro has published over 100 refereed scientific journal papers, about 150 conference abstracts, led the publication of 21 manuscripts and workshop proceedings on applications of geomatics in hydrology, and 2 book chapters on surface water remote sensing. Dr. Pietroniro is also involved in developing innovative frameworks for linking hydrological and atmospheric models. This includes using various geomatics and isotopic techniques to establish hydrological pathways and improve water resources modelling results. Dr. Pietroniro is a registered professional engineer in the province of Saskatchewan.
Research
Areas of Research
The research areas focus on water resources, and they are impacted by climate change and water management activities. His research also focuses on prediction of various components of the water cycle, the changing water cycle in Canada and on the predictability of water resources at all space and time scales. Through these efforts he is working collaboratively with many academics, researchers and various agencies to develop next-generation computational infrastructure for hydrological modelling. This includes developing seamless multi-scale geospatial information for river networks, connections between rivers and lakes, and the corresponding multi-scale and multi-methods for the spatial discretization of the landscape. This work also includes advance model representation of hydrological processes and dominant physical processes in the regions where the models are applied. Also, hydrological models require extensive information on geospatial parameters that describe the storage and fluxes of water and energy in the different model sub-domains. This parametrization is an important aspect of the on-going research.
Courses
| Course number | Course title | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| ENCI 510 | Engineering Hydrology | Fall 2025, 2026 |
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