Prof Dragan Savic FREng

Professor of Hydroinformatics

Telephone: 01392 723637

Extension: (Streatham) 3637

Research profile on

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Professor Savić (FREng, FICE, FCIWEM, FIWA, MASCE, CEng), a founder and former director of the Centre for Water Systems, is the UK’s first Professor of Hydroinformatics having held this post at the University of Exeter since 2001. He is also the CEO of KWR Water Research Institute, the Dutch drinking water companies’ collective research organisation.

Research Interests

His research interests cover the interdisciplinary field of Hydroinformatics, which transcends traditional boundaries of water/ environmental science and engineering, informatics/ computer science (including Artificial Intelligence, data mining and optimisation techniques) and environmental engineering. Applications are generally in the environmental engineering/science areas, including water resources management (both quality and quantity), flood management, water & wastewater systems and environmental protection & management. Some of the research topics include:

development and application of Artificial Intelligence-based decision-support systems, simulation and optimization models to improve understanding and provide solutions to water engineering problems;
hydroinformatics tools and techniques and their effective application to managing risk and uncertainties associated with water systems;
real-time management of urban water systems involving smart monitoring, telemetered systems and sensor networks;
cross-disciplinary complex system approaches to water resource management;
understanding of urban water distribution and wastewater systems, including technical, socio-economic and environmental issues;
integrated assessment modelling of the water-food-energy system/nexus;
integrated asset management methodologies for water industry applications.

He is currently PI on the Water-Futures ERC Synergy Grant (2021-2027) working on long-term sustainable transitions of drinking water systems under deep uncertainty.

Other current and recent funded research projects include NEXTGEN (transformational circular economy solutions and systems around resource use in the water sector), Fiware4water (development of modular applications using FIWARE and open API architecture for the real time management of water systems) and Aqua3s (water safety through the combination of novel technologies in water safety and the standardisation of existing sensor technologies).

Teaching Interests

Professor Savić has lectured extensively throughout UK and abroad where he has given research presentations at many institutions on all continents. He has held a Visiting Professor position at the Universities of Bari (Italy), Novi Sad and Belgrade (Serbia), IHE Delft Institute for Water Education (Delft, The Netherlands), Harbin Institute of Technology (Harbin, China) and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia). He has lectured in the fields of:

urban water systems;
system modelling and optimization;
hydroinformatics.

You can read here my musings on various topics related to water:

Other Relevant Information

Professor Savić is a Chartered Civil and Water Engineer with over forty years of experience in research, teaching and consulting. He is elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Member of the European Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) and Fellow of the International Water Association (IWA).

Professor Savic served as Head of Engineering Department from 2010 until 2014.

Qualifications : Dipl. Ing. (Belgrade), MSc (Belgrade), PhD (Manitoba), all in Civil Engineering