Shaping a Decision Support System for Mediterranean Integrated Water Resources Management: Main challenges approaching the project end

30/3/2015

The Water-DROP project is a € 1.9 million project which is 90% EU funded in the framework of the ENPI CBC Mediterranean Sea Basin Programme. It is coordinated by ENEA and has the collaboration of 9 cross-country partners and 3 associates from Italy, Cyprus, Spain, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.

On March 19th and 20th, the University of Nicosia hosted in Cyprus a two-day meeting event for the project Water Drop.

Water Drop, which is now at his second year of activities and is to be completed by December 2015, is piloting a broad range of water-use related aspects: marine and fresh water monitoring (Lebanon), water treatment and reuse in agriculture (Palestine), water recovery and governance (Jordan), recovery of a natural wetland (Italy). Its aim is to demonstrate the efficiency and efficacy of an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), using an innovative GIS-based decision support system to measure and monitor the implementation of the actions, as well as their outcome.

The final challenge for the thirteen “Water-DROP” partners —including among others local communities and municipalities in Palestine and Jordan, Spanish and Italian NGOs, Italian, Lebanese and Cyprian academic and public research institutions, as well as specialised International Development Organisations (IUCN)— is to identify models and best practices to overcome the mismanagement of water resources, fostering coherency among different policies impacting on water. ENEA expertise fed into the projects relates to both the pilot action in Torre Flavia and the development, together with University of Nicosia, of a sophisticated decision support system allowing the elaboration of different scenarios and thematic maps, combining the Cartography information with multiple data sets information related to country data on the water cycle management, social mapping of relevant stakeholders, statutory Legislation, water related ancillary data, water quality, water treatment plant.

: Italy - Torre Flavia

: Lebanon

: Palestine

Capitalisation of promising results of the above activities is an important added value. A Mediterranean Task Force is to be convened in incoming months in Florence, hosted by Tuscany Region —the project partner in charge of the legislation review— to work on the revision of the water-related legislation and to elaborate some common proposals.