The Canary Islands will experience less rainfall, more heat, and greater water demand before the end of the century. Accurately predicting when, how much, and in which areas this will happen is precisely what SICMA Canarias does. This open-access platform, developed by the University of La Laguna in collaboration with the Climate Research Foundation (FICLIMA) and the company Meteogrid, has just received the most prestigious international award for sustainable water management.<\/p>\n
The UK's Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)\u2014one of the world's most prestigious professional organizations in civil engineering, with over two centuries of history\u2014has awarded the project the 2026 Chris Binnie Award for Sustainable Water Management, an award open to initiatives worldwide that have generated social benefits through the responsible use of water. The award panel highlighted SICMA's broad, strategic, and replicable impact, describing it as a benchmark in its field. According to the publicly available list of award winners, no Spanish project had previously received this recognition.<\/p>\n
The prestige of the award is evident in the profile of the projects recognized in previous editions: in 2020 it went to Project Gilghi, a solar water treatment plant for a remote Indigenous community in Australia's Northern Territory; in 2023, to a decision support system for flood management in Bangkok; in 2024, to a lake regeneration initiative in New Delhi based on urban wetlands; and in 2025, to the Peru Reconstruction Programme, aimed at protecting 16 million people from flooding through an investment of \u00a33.7 billion. In this context, SICMA Canarias joins an international lineup of leading projects in sustainable water management.<\/p>\n
The platform, accessible in canarias.sicma.red<\/a>, It offers high-resolution climate projections\u2014100 x 100 meters\u2014adapted to the archipelago's microclimatic complexity and integrates ten climate models from CMIP6 and four future socioeconomic scenarios. This allows for the analysis, up to the end of this century, of potential changes in variables such as precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration, and water balance, and transforms that information into technical support for hydrological planning and territorial adaptation.<\/p>\n The tool was developed within the framework of the European project ARSINOE, funded by the European Union, and is designed as direct support for public decision-making in a context where island territories face increasing pressure from decreased rainfall, greater climate irregularity and increased water demand.<\/p>\n The recognized team consists of Juan Carlos Santamarta Cerezal<\/a>, professor at the University of La Laguna; Noelia Cruz P\u00e9rez<\/a>, professor at the same institution, and C\u00e9sar Paradinas Bl\u00e1zquez, from FICLIMA, along with other researchers, in a work that combines university research, specialized technical development and transfer applied to climate adaptation.<\/p>\n According to Juan Carlos Santamarta, the project coordinator, "this award recognizes work developed in the Canary Islands, but with an international focus. SICMA Canarias demonstrates that island territories can generate useful and transferable knowledge to anticipate the effects of climate change on water and support technically sound public decisions.".<\/p>\n Noelia Cruz P\u00e9rez emphasizes that "the fact that an institution like ICE values a tool developed in the Canary Islands confirms that adapting to climate change on islands requires specific, rigorous, and replicable solutions. It is also a recognition of the collaborative work between universities, technical entities, and specialized partners.".<\/p>\n The official award ceremony will take place in London on July 2, 2026, in a ceremony presided over by David Porter, president of the ICE.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Canarias tendr\u00e1 menos lluvia, m\u00e1s calor y mayor demanda de agua antes de que acabe el siglo. Anticipar con precisi\u00f3n…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5510,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,37,10],"tags":[1277,367,2655,1912,369,370,371],"class_list":["post-5509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-destacado","category-investigacion","category-portada-ull","tag-agua","tag-arsinoe","tag-ciclo-del-agua","tag-gestion-del-agua","tag-juan-carlos-santamarta","tag-noelia-cruz","tag-sicma-canarias"],"acf":[],"primary_category":null,"featured_image_thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/10\/JUAN-CARLOS-SANTAMARTA-Y-NOELIA-CRUZ-DE-LA-ULL-300x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ull.es\/portal\/noticias\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}