Question 67

Innovative technology and practices for increasing water use efficiency. Irrigation management and services, remote sensing, irrigation equipment,... where do we stand?

National and general reporters & Keynote speakers

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Bruno Cheviron

National reporter

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Maher Salman

General reporter

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Gilles Belaud

National Reporter

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Véronique Bellon-Maurel

Keynote speaker

General Reporter : Maher Salman

Mr Maher Salman has nearly 30 years of experience in international assistance and technical and policy development in agricultural water resource management that geographically extends to all regions.  

Currently, he is the Senior Land and Water Officer and the Team Lead of Agricultural Water Management at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), leading programs and engagements on irrigation modernization, crop water productivity, water use efficiency, transboundary water management, water policy, natural resource-driven fragility, and integrated drought management. He leads the transitioning into the digital era of FAO’s tools and norms in Agricultural Water Management. 

Mr Salman also acts as the Coordinator of Adaptation Fund at FAO as well as the focal point to a number of organizations, including ICID, UNCCD, and multilateral development banks. 

He received his graduate studies from Syria and the UK in civil and water engineering. 

National Reporter : Bruno Cheviron

Physicist, holding a PhD in geophysics from Paris VI University – Pierre and Marie Curie (2004), and a specialist in modeling environmental fluxes (water, heat, solutes, sediments), he joined the UMR G-EAU in Montpellier in 2012 to work on irrigation and associated biophysical processes, from the elementary scale to the field scale.

He obtained his Habilitation to Direct Research (HDR) in 2021 and became a Research Director in 2023. He oversees the development of the Optirrig model (generation, analysis, and optimization of irrigation scenarios), leads the OPTIMISTE team (Optimization of Irrigation Management and Technologies), co-leads the INRAE network “Agricultural Systems and Water,” and is a member of the Scientific Council of the Rhône-Mediterranean-Corsica Water Agency.

The common thread of his work is improving irrigation decision-making rules to identify better resource management strategies through innovative approaches, both at small scales (agrivoltaics, urban heat islands, use of optimal control theory frameworks, coupling of irrigation and soil erosion models) and at territorial scales (support for public policies, Territorial Water Management Projects, coupling of hydrological and agronomic models).

National reporter : Gilles Belaud

Professor at the Institut Agro Montpellier and Deputy Head of the G-EAU research unit, Gilles Belaud is a specialist in agricultural water management. He holds a PhD in Mechanics from Université Lyon 1 and a Habilitation to Direct Research from Université de Montpellier, and has nearly 30 years of experience in water sciences.

His research focuses on the hydrology of irrigated systems, modelling and control of irrigation networks, and water resource monitoring, including remote sensing approaches. He has worked extensively in water-scarce regions across Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Highly involved in collaborative research, he notably coordinated the European PRIMA HubIS project (2020–2024) and leads several initiatives at the interface of science, innovation, and public policy.

His work aims to improve sustainable agricultural water management by developing practical solutions tailored to the challenges of climate change.