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This paper presents an analysis of the effect of climate change on modifying the dredging cost to maintain the navigation channel at the actual capacity of the Parana waterway (Argentina). The Parana2Paraguay Rivers system is one of the most important inner navigation waterways in the world, where approximately 100 million tons of cargo are transported per year. Maintenance of the navigation channel requires continuous dredging by Hidrovía SA (limited liability company), which is responsible for ensuring the minimum water depth for navigation. A failure event occurred during January 2012 when a bulk cargo carrier ran aground, interrupting fluvial trading for 10 days. Numerical models were applied to simulate hydro-sedimentation processes at the Lower Parana River to estimate dredging costs for a given flow discharge. The resulting function relates the sedimentation rate (i.e. the dredging effort required to keep the present depth for vessel draft) to forcing hydrology conditions. This function and the statistical evaluation of climate scenarios were used to calculate the probability of failure for navigation and the associated cost of channel maintenance. The most appropriate dredging effort was estimated by detecting the minimum total cost (i.e. dredging plus failure) to varying the yearly average discharge and by analysing the sensitivity of the total cost to different degrees of economic impact.

The Dupuy catchment (Laferrere, Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires) has suffered numerous floods in recent years. The frequency and magnitude of these events, coupled with the large number of people affected, has led to some community representatives organising themselves to collect flood records, increase awareness of the problem and push for solutions and mitigating actions. That campaign inspired the study of the flooding dynamics of the catchment, with the aim of developing simple tools for risk mitigation. To analyse the water dynamics in the catchment, a high‐resolution urban numerical model was implemented with the EPA‐SWMM software. Due to the lack of systematic observations of flow variables, the model was validated using data collected by the affected community itself. More than 500 simulations of different synthetic storms were run on a high‐performance computational cluster and analysed. These processed results, coupled with the observation of rainfall intensities during an event, may be used by the community and risk managers to reduce exposure and mitigate flood risk.

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