When Dr. Sonia Hassini first entered civil engineering, she imagined a future in construction. But as she moved deeper into her studies in Tunisia, her attention shifted toward the systems that make cities livable, especially the fragile and often overlooked networks that manage water. Exposure to hydraulics, water distribution challenges, watershed analysis, and water scarcity revealed a field full of urgent problems and unexplored research opportunities. That early curiosity ultimately set her on a path toward becoming a researcher dedicated to sustainable stormwater management and infrastructure resilience.

Today, as an Assistant Professor at McMaster University, Dr. Hassini works at the intersection of engineering, probabilistic modelling, sustainability, and community engagement. Her research aims to help municipalities, conservation authorities, and industry partners build infrastructure systems that are more resilient, more equitable, and better prepared for climate driven change.

A Research Path Built on Strong Foundations

Dr. Hassini brings a unique global perspective to solving water challenges. Her journey from Tunisia to Waterloo and McMaster shaped her passion for understanding and managing water systems. Early engineering training grounded her in the fundamentals, while interdisciplinary studies revealed the power of analytical and mathematical modeling. Her PhD work on urban stormwater created models that predict runoff in small catchments, now being scaled to larger watersheds. Combining expertise in stochastic analysis with a focus on practical solutions, she is advancing integrated approaches to watershed management and exploring innovative water-energy systems.

Why Stormwater Management Matters Now More Than Ever

For Dr. Hassini, the urgency of her work is clear. Urban flooding has become increasingly common across Canadian cities due to climate change, rapid urbanization, and aging infrastructure. Traditional systems, often designed for return periods as low as 5 to 25 years, are simply not built to handle the intensity and frequency of modern storms.

“We shouldn’t look at stormwater as a problem,” she emphasizes. “We should look at it as a source, and then take care of it.” Uncontrolled runoff not only overwhelms urban drainage systems but carries pollution into lakes, rivers, and wetlands, damaging ecosystems and increasing treatment costs.

Sustainable stormwater infrastructure, including low impact development practices such as permeable pavements, bioswales, and green roofs, offers part of the solution. But implementing these systems effectively requires new tools, better data, and more advanced modeling approaches, all areas where her research contributes.

From Models to Actionable Solutions

Dr. Hassini’s analytical models provide a more accurate way to represent rainfall events, run-off generation, and infrastructure performance. Traditional approaches often assume a singular return period for a storm, ignoring the fact that rainfall duration, depth, and inter event timing can each follow different statistical patterns. This oversimplification leads to designs that may not reflect real world performance, particularly under changing climate conditions.

Her probabilistic models allow municipalities and engineering teams to run simulations more efficiently, incorporate climate change considerations, and test multiple design options without the computational burden of continuous long-term simulation. These tools, she notes, can support both preliminary design and optimization of stormwater systems, especially in urban environments where space, cost, and performance trade-offs are complex.

Dr. Hassini is also exploring the long-term maintenance of low impact development (LID) systems, a critical issue for municipalities. Because these systems are decentralized and spread across many properties, assessing performance and planning maintenance remain major challenges. Her research aims to identify optimal maintenance and monitoring strategies that ensure LID infrastructure continues to deliver promised benefits decades after installation.

The Value of Collaboration and Community Engagement

Real world impact, Dr. Hassini notes, depends on strong partnerships. Municipalities, conservation authorities, utilities, insurance companies, technology providers, and community organizations all have a role to play.

Insurance companies, for example, are increasingly motivated to mitigate basement flooding and climate related claims. LID manufacturers and engineering firms need better performance data and optimized designs. Municipalities and conservation authorities require tools for planning, retrofitting, and evaluating existing infrastructure. Community members must be engaged in stormwater solutions, especially in residential areas where private property interventions are needed.

This is also where organizations like the Ontario Water Consortium can play a powerful enabling role.

She hopes to build stronger connections through OWC to accelerate adoption of her research, whether through pilot opportunities, real-world testing sites, or industry partnerships. “Collaboration is very important for the success of this research,” she says. Equally important is knowledge mobilization. Researchers need visibility so partners can discover the tools and expertise they have to offer. Articles like this help create those pathways.

Looking Ahead: Integrated Watershed Management and the Water Energy Nexus

Dr. Hassini’s future research ambitions are expansive. She is increasingly interested in:

  • the water energy nexus and decentralized hydropower generation
  • integrated watershed management approaches that bring multiple pieces of the system together
  • improving stormwater infrastructure performance not just for quantity control but also for water quality
  • challenges in water distribution, pipe deterioration, and water demand modeling
  • circularity and sustainable resource use across the urban water cycle

Her overarching goal remains consistent: reduce the impacts of climate change and urban growth while ensuring communities have safe, resilient infrastructure and healthy ecosystems.

On a global scale, she sees opportunities to adapt and transfer innovations across climates and contexts. Testing North American models in arid and semi-arid regions, for example, could lead to valuable international collaborations and more universally applicable tools.

A Vision for Resilient, Sustainable Cities

Whether modelling rainfall events, optimizing LID design, or exploring the water energy nexus, Dr. Hassini’s work aims to help communities manage water more intelligently and sustainably. Her research reflects a broader vision of cities where flooding is minimized, infrastructure is resilient, pollution is reduced, and water is viewed not as a threat but as a vital resource.

It is a vision urgently needed today, and one that stands to benefit communities locally and globally.

Join the Conversation

Dr. Hassini is actively seeking collaborations with municipalities, conservation authorities, industry partners, and fellow researchers to advance resilient and sustainable stormwater solutions. If you are interested in partnering or learning more about her research, reach out through the Ontario Water Consortium or McMaster University.