Jairo Alberto Villada Arroyave

Jairo Alberto Villada Arroyave is a Civil Engineer from Politecnico Colombiano Jaime Isaza Cadavid in Colombia and MSc degree in Water Science and Engineering with specialization in Hydraulic Engineering and River Basin Development from UNESCO-IHE Delft and PhD fellow from Delft University of Technology and IHE Delft in The Netherlands.

Since 2018, Mr. Villada has been leading the Socio-environmental department in the international energy company Celsia S.A. He has participated as socio-environmental chief in the construction of hydropower plants in Colombia for the company Celsia S.A, he has also participated in hydraulic modelling projects for the aqueduct matrix network with the Empresa de Acueducto y Alcantarillado de Bogota (Colombia), he has also participated in maritime and fluvial navigation projects in the maritime and fluvial sub-direction of INVIAS (Colombia), he has participated as a specialist in hydraulics and hydrology for the projects of implementation of early warning systems for the agricultural sector with Corpoica, on the Bogota river, the south of the department of Atlantico and the region of La Mojana (Colombia). Likewise, the engineer Villada has international experience in the development of early warning systems for the Tagus river basin in Spain and in the area of river morphology and flood management in the “Common Meuse” river in the Netherlands. Mr Villada has experience for more than 18 years in the public and the private sector.

The main objective of his research is to investigate the Samana Norte River basin in Colombia, which is highly impacted by the construction of multiple hydropower infrastructure, deforestation for wood commercialization, and intense farming and fishing and to propose a methodology to define reservoir operation rules by optimization procedures to obtain an operation plan for multiple dam systems considering temporal variations of water availability, energy needs, fish population and economic growth.

This research is funded by Celsia S.A.

A complete list of publications can be found in ResearchGate.

Influence of vegetation on the long term morphological processes in the Common Meuse River - Pilot Project Meers. (The Netherlands)
Institution: UNESCO-IHE Institute for water education - Delft – The Netherlands
Area: Hydrodynamic, Biomorphology, River Restorations, Floodplain vegetation, sediments and flood control.

Application of the Model BASINS MR 3.0 (Better Assessment Science Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources) for the Environmental and Hydrological Management of “La Picacha” creek affluent of Medellin River (Medellin-Colombia)
Institution: Politecnico Colombiano Jaime Isaza Cadavid - Medellin – Colombia
Area: Hydrology, Hydraulic, Environmental Management, GIS