The 15th International Symposium on River Sedimentation (ISRS) was held in Florence, Italy, from September 5 to 8, 2023, with more than 200 delegates from more than 20 countries and regions around the world. The International Symposium on River Sedimentation is a triennial series of academic activities sponsored by the International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation (IRTCES) and the World Association for Sedimentation and Erosion Research (WASER), with the permanent secretariat of the meeting located in IRTCES. The 15th ISRS was jointly organized by the University of Florence and the University of Padua, Italy. The theme of the conference was "Sustainable Sediment Management in a Changing Environment", which included topics such as sediment and pollutant transport; morphodynamics; ecohydraulics; sediment related disaster and climate change; reservoir sedimentation, interactions between sediment and hydraulic structures; sustainable sediment management at the river-coastal basin scale, and social, economic & political issues related to sediment and water management.

15th International Symposium on River Sedimentation

Welcome speeches at the Opening Ceremony

The 15th International Symposium on River Sedimentation was officially opened on September 6 in Florence. Seven welcome speeches were made by Prof. Claudio Lubello, Director of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Florence, Prof. Luca Solari also from the same department, Prof. Helmut Habersack, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, President of WASER, Prof. Guangquan Liu, IRTCES professor, Secretary General of WASER, Prof. Isabella Bonamini, Northern Apennines River Basin District Authority, Prof. Sara Di Maio, Italian National Association of Land Reclamation in Tuscany, and Prof. Leonardo Rossi, water management company Publiacqua SpA. They welcomed experts, scholars and young researchers from all over the world to meet, exchange experiences, share knowledge, and jointly promote the progress of research and management practices of river sediment problems in the world under the changing environment. The opening ceremony was chaired by Prof. Luca Solari, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence.

Prof. Enrica Viparelli             Prof. Junke Guo

Prof. Mengzhen Xu        Research Engineer Alain Recking

Keynote reports at the conference

The conference include 5 keynote reports and more than 120 technical presentations. The conference keynote reports include:

• Prof. Zhaoyin Wang and Prof. Mengzhen Xu (China)：Delta development and artificial land creation with sediment；
• Prof. Enrica Viparelli (USA)：Role of bed level variability on tracer dispersal in an equilibrium bed；
• Prof. Marcelo H. Garcia (USA)：Entrainment, transport and mixing of fine iron mine tailings in the Paraopeba River, Brazil；
• Prof. Junke Guo (USA)：Modelling river bedform evolution；
• Research Engineer Alain Recking (France)：Accounting natural variability in 1D bedload prediction: a field case study；

Honorary Member Award and Best Paper Award of IJSR presented

The WASER Honorary Member Award and the Best Paper Award of the International Journal of Sediment Research (IJSR) were presented at the meeting on September 7th. Prof. Giampaolo Di Silvio of Italy, Academician Chunhong Hu and Prof. Zhaoyin Wang of China were awarded as Honorary Member, and three papers published by scholars from China, Saudi Arabia, and New Zealand in IJSR were awarded the Best Paper Award. Prof. Guangquan Liu, Secretary General of WASER, announced that the 16th ISRS will be hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in Omaha, USA in 2025. Prof. Guangquan Liu received the flag of the Symposium from Prof. Luca Solari, the representative of the organizing committee, and then handed it over to Prof. Junke Guo, the representative of the next organizer.

A technical visit was organized on September 8th, where delegates visited the Bilancino Lake in the northwest of the city of Florence, the San Niccolò weir on the Arno River in the city center and the new power plant, where they learned about water supply and hydroelectric power generation in the city of Florence, as well as technologies related to sediment management in urban water landscape design, biodiversity conservation and efficient use of water resources.

ISRS symposium banner hand over

On the afternoon of September 8th, the 15th ISRS was closed. Prof. Luca Solari, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, hosted and summarized the meeting on behalf of the local organizing committee, and Prof. Guangquan Liu, Secretary General of WASER, thanked the University of Florence and the University of Padua for their efforts in making the Symposium a success, and welcomed the delegates to meet again in Omaha, USA, in 2025!

Group photo of the attendees