Welcome to our WaterTheft website, which will report the progress we make in our project towards forecasting adaptation surprises in human–water systems. WaterTheft is an ERC‑funded research project that investigates how human behaviour, institutions, and biophysical processes interact in ways that can produce unexpected and often abrupt and counter‑intuitive outcomes in water‑scarce environments. Our goal is to better anticipate these “adaptation surprises” and improve the design of water‑management and climate‑adaptation policies.
We have formed an interdisciplinary team of economists, hydrologists, and data scientists, and have started working intensively on our case studies in Spain, Australia and the US. We have already begun collaborating with leading international partners in case studies, including the University of Adelaide, UCLA, and UC Davis, who will work with us to generate primary data, identify relevant secondary data, set up models, and assess results.
During the first phase of the project, we have produced comprehensive land‑use, water‑use, hydrological, and economic datasets, combining original data collection with the careful aggregation and harmonisation of secondary sources. These datasets – documented and curated for reuse – are available through the relevant data tabs on this site and are intended to support both our own research and that of the wider scientific community.
In parallel, we have conducted a first round of controlled experiments, testing three mental processes that we hypothesise play a relevant role in shaping irrigators’ behaviour. These behavioural insights are being assessed and integrated into mechanistic human–water system models, allowing us to move beyond descriptive analyses toward predictive, theory‑informed modelling. The code for these models is openly available in the Model section of this website.
On the publication side, the project has already produced one peer‑reviewed article, with four additional manuscripts currently under revision, covering experimental findings, modelling advances, and empirical insights from the case studies.
This website serves as a living record of these achievements and many others still to come. Here you will find updates on research progress, working papers, data and code, project events, and opportunities for collaboration. We hope it will be a useful platform for researchers, practitioners, and policy‑makers interested in water scarcity, climate adaptation, and the complex dynamics of human–water systems.
We invite you to explore the project, follow our progress, and engage with WaterTheft as it develops.