Acción por el Clima

La Facultad de Ingeniería en Ciencias de la Tierra (FICT) de la ESPOL recibió la visita del Dr. Leonardo Gutiérrez, Senior Research Scientist del Centre for Advanced Process Technology for Urban REsource recovery (CAPTURE) y Director Internacional de la red EC-Water.

As part of THE FINAL PITCH held during ESPOL's IDEAR STEM Fair, the project “From Rain to the Future: Engineering that Transforms Cities” was presented. This innovative proposal aims to transform urban drainage management through sustainable and resilient solutions.

A study published in Construction and Building Materials analyzes the geomorphological and lithological factors that influence susceptibility to landslides in the Ecuadorian Andes, integrating advanced machine learning models. The research identified key variables such as slope, lithology, and proximity to drainage systems, generating high-precision maps for risk management.

From January 28 to 31, 2026, researchers from the Center for Research and Applied Projects in Earth Sciences and professors from The Faculty of Earth Sciences Engineering at the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral held a training session in Francisco de Orellana as part of a project aimed at strengthening local capacities to address the impacts of illegal mining.

ESPOL’s FICT held the academic talk ‘Exploring the Amazon from Space: GIS and Remote Sensing in University Education,’ aimed at strengthening academic training through the use of geospatial tools. During the event, a scientific article analyzing the expansion of illegal mining in Zamora Chinchipe was presented, highlighting the use of GIS and remote sensing—developed by the faculty of ingenieria en...—to understand territorial dynamics, support decision-making, and prevent environmental and social impacts in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The UNESCO Chair in Geosciences Applied to Sustainable Development at ESPOL promoted the value of kamanchaka, coastal fog that brings moisture to the Prosperina Protected Forest, sustaining biodiversity and ecological processes in dry areas through natural water collection.

The project “Monitoring of soil health bioindicators in syntropic agroforestry food systems in the Amazon” was approved and funded by CNPq and ACTO in the Pro-Amazonia call for proposals. The initiative, led by UFRA with the participation of ESPOL, will integrate GIS and remote sensing to analyze and monitor soil health. ESPOL's participation is through Ph.D. Andrés Velástegui, strengthening international scientific cooperation and the generation of key information for the sustainable management of the Amazon region.

The ESPOL participated in the Second Meeting of the Network of National Centers of Excellence in CCUS, co-organized by the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Program and the Gulf Coast Carbon Center. The meeting brought together centers from Asia and Latin America to exchange advances, strengthen capacities, and promote projects in carbon capture, use, and storage.

Researchers from FICT–ESPOL published a study in the journal Geoenergy Science and Engineering (Q1–Decile 1) on polymer-enhanced CO₂ foams (HPAM) to control their mobility in enhanced oil recovery and geological storage processes. The experimental results demonstrate greater sweeping efficiency compared to conventional foams. The work was carried out in collaboration with the University of Bergen, strengthening international scientific cooperation.

The Faculty of Earth Sciences Engineering (FICT) at the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral participated virtually in the Latin American Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water, and Environment Systems, held in Cartagena de Indias, where it presented research on life cycle assessment in wastewater treatment plants. This participation strengthened the institution's international scientific profile and institutional commitment to sustainable development.