TIP-FRESH

The TIP-FRESH project is funded by the ERC Starting Grant (2025-2030) and is led by Marta Tuninetti at Politecnico di Torino. 

Our research group will tackle the water scarcity challenge with an innovative approach: we will bring Socio-Hydrology to a new frontier by exploiting the concept of social tipping points to reverse the freshwater crisis. Triggering a rapid adoption toward virtuous diets, thanks to individual choice and collective social dynamics, can off set chain reactions across international trade networks and production systems, ultimately reshaping the freshwater system.

To achieve this objective, the project will draw on multiple disciplines: Hydrology, to gain a deeper understanding of how dietary patterns affect precipitation regimes; Mathematics & Physics, to identify how and when the most abrupt dietary changes have occurred in recent decades; Computational Sociology and Behavioural Psychology, to investigate the role of individual choices and collective dynamics in accelerating dietary transitions.