Luca Brocca

Luca Brocca received the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 2003 and 2008. Since (2009) 2019 he is (Researcher) Director of Research at the National Research Council, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (CNR-IRPI) in Perugia. He is (co-)author of 200+ journal refereed papers (21000+ citations), 80+ papers in peer-reviewed conference proceedings/book chapters, and 10+ regional and global datasets. He is the head of the Hydrology Next Group at CNR-IRPI and he is involved as (co-)PI in several projects funded by the European Commission and Space Agencies (ESA, EUMETSAT). Among others, in 2012, he received the “Early Career Research Excellence” award by iEMSs society, in 2018 he has been the winner of the Copernicus Masters competition “BayWa Smart Farming Challenge”, in 2019 and 2020 he has been nominated “Highly Cited Researchers” by Web of Science Group – Clarivate, and in 2021 he won the “ESA–EGU Earth Observation Excellence Award”. The main research interest of Luca Brocca lies in the development of innovative methods for exploiting satellite observations (soil moisture, rainfall, river discharge) for hydrological applications including floods, landslides, rainfall, droughts, irrigation, water resources management (e.g., SM2RAIN, irrigation from space), and he is recognized expert in digital twin technology for hydrology (DTE Hydrology).