| projects-531 |
1386 |
FIT4REUSE |
Safe and sustainable solutions for the integrated use of non-conventional water resources in the Mediterranean agricultural sector |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2018 |
Water Management |
2019-07-01 |
2022-12-31 |
Completed |
€ 002 020 000.00 |
High treatment costs, possible negative effects and actual low public acceptance can hinder and restrict the safe usage of non-conventional water resources (NCWR, i.e. treated wastewater and desalinated water) that can help the Mediterranean region to overcome water scarcity in agriculture. FIT4REUSE aims to tackle these challenges through three main pillars of the project: i) innovation of treatment technology, ii) application in simulated/relevant environment and iii) assessment and regulation, insured by the inclusion of research, governmental and industrial partners from different parts of the Mediterranean region. The first pillar will concentrate on the wastewater treatment and desalination to optimize the treatment technologies and to offer sustainable solutions. In particular, nature-based solutions and intensive wastewater treatment will be tested singularly or combined to provide the best possible quality of alternative water resources that can later be safely used in agriculture. Once water of suitable quality is obtained, the second pillar will study direct and indirect water reuse schemes. Different irrigation technologies and practices, together with the effects that NCWR have on soil and food safety will be studied. In the case of aquifer recharge with treated wastewater, the application pillar will aim to find the best way to preserve aquifer water quality and its ecological balance, improving also the soil treatment and the infiltration processes. The third pillar will study the results obtained and analyse economic, social and environmental impacts of the solutions proposed. Moreover, the reasons for low public acceptance of NCWR will be analysed and solutions offered to overcome problems connected to it within the actual policies and regulatory framework. Finally, guidelines to standardise water reuse safety planning will be developed to minimise the threats and support regulation and water policies in Mediterranean regions. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/fit4reuse |
Urban water', 'Groundwater' |
| projects-532 |
No data |
MED-WET |
Improving MEDiterranean irrigation and Water supply for smallholder farmers by providing Efficient, low-cost and nature-based Technologies and practices |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2020 |
Water Management |
2021-11-01 |
2024-10-31 |
Completed |
€ 000 601 063.00 |
Mediterranean regions already face significant water scarcity. High tourist activities during the summer months additionally stress the limited water reserves, at a disadvantage for agriculture. Population growth, changing food consumption patterns and climate change are expected to intensify stresses. This calls for more efficient and sustainable irrigation technologies that are widely applicable for smallholder farmers. They must be low-cost, lean solutions that optimise natural resource use and income even at small scales. MED-WET provides such solutions to enhance irrigation efficiency as well as to increase freshwater availability by tapping into non-conventional water sources. Our selected solutions are low-tech, low-energy, easy-to-operate solutions using cheap, locally available and natural materials geared towards financial feasibility. We develop these in an iterative process with active involvement of smallholder farmers in piloting and adaptation to their specific operational requirements. Engagement activities are also geared towards capacity building of farmers to promote the adoption of project-developed solutions. We take a community perspective to integrated water management, identifying potentials for clusters/partnerships of farmers and potentially other stakeholders for shared investment and operation of technologies to produce irrigation water from non-conventional sources (rainwater, brackish water, household and farm wastewater). Relevant local decision-makers from project pilot areas are involved to tackle institutional barriers to adoption of proposed technologies. MED-WET develops new irrigation and water harvesting technologies specifically for smallholder farmers as well as to educate them and other stakeholders on water efficiency options in addition to those sole solutions. The action also improves the situation for women, who are the most involved population in small-scale agricultural activities in the Southern Mediterranean countries, through engaging with them in empowering and educating workshops. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/med-wet |
Urban water', 'Wetlands', 'Groundwater' |
| projects-533 |
1501 |
InTheMED |
Innovative and Sustainable Groundwater Management in the Mediterranean |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2019 |
Water Management |
2020-03-01 |
2023-08-31 |
Completed |
€ 001 589 000.00 |
Imagine a groundwater manager sitting in front of the computer, with a window open to a website where questions about the response of the aquifer to a reduction of infiltration in a dry year could be asked and answered almost instantly. Imagine a farmer in need of introducing a new fertilizer who could query the same website and know the impact that a given load will have on groundwater quality. Imagine a hydrogeologist building a numerical model to analyse the impact of some dewatering wells in need of historical data about the evolution of piezometric levels in the aquifer and getting those data online. Imagine a citizen, any citizen, concerned with climate change and interested in the evolution of groundwater reserves in the region and obtaining this information from the cloud. Imagine innovative sustainable management of groundwater in the MED. Stop imagining because this is InTheMED, a project aimed at providing the most innovative decision support system tools to be demonstrated and applied in selected case studies around the Mediterranean; a project also aimed at fostering the sharing of data, methods and results, making sharing the rule rather than the exception. Tools solidly founded in the most advanced system-process and socio-economic models, and the participatory involvement of all stakeholders, from water authorities to end users, from hydrogeology experts to total system analysts. Imagining InTheMED is imagining a better understanding of groundwater, better groundwater resilience, a new way of modelling, management and remediation, and a new manner of understanding decision support systems, always aimed at ensuring groundwater sustainability in water-stressed areas in the Mediterranean. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/inthemed |
Groundwater' |
| projects-534 |
1825 |
PureCircles |
PureCircles |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2022 |
Water Management |
2023-06-01 |
2026-11-30 |
On going |
€ 002 782 438.00 |
In the Mediterranean, freshwater availability is put under increasing pressure by global warming, land use changes, and water abstraction. Moreover, deteriorating water and soil quality put agricultural productivity and safe water supply for the population at further risk and urgently demand sustainable solutions. PureCircles wants to realize such solutions at four Mediterranean study sites by integrating water technology with agrotechnical setups and management strategies. For the first time, the project will demonstrate the power and effectiveness of a combination of agrophotovoltaics, hydroponics, smart irrigation and innovative water storage and treatment technology, all of which are intelligently linked and regulated through Artificial Intelligence (AI). Sophisticated, but robust technology (e.g., flexible greenhouse photovoltaics (PV), water-harvesting, AI-assisted farm management) will meet nature-based and sustainable water treatment solutions (hydroponics, microbial bioremediation) and shall be assembled and activated dependent on need and framing conditions (financial resources, availability and quality of water, crop choice, weather forecast). |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/purecircles |
Urban water', 'Water reservoir', 'Groundwater' |
| projects-535 |
1913 |
SWRIPS |
Sustainable Water Re-use with Innovative Purification and Sensing system for the agri-food supply chain |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2022 |
Water Management |
2023-10-01 |
2026-09-30 |
On going |
No data |
The SWRIPS project aims to increase the efficiency, sustainability and competitiveness of the water usage in the agri-food supply chain (SC) in the EU-Med area under a circular economy approach to save water and minimize the external use of resources, avoiding further contamination of land and water. The project addresses the thematic “Water Management - Prevent and reduce land and water salinization and pollution due to agri-food activities”. In fact, SWRIPS aims to recover the wastewater produced in the agri-food processing and to reuse the purified water for fertigation purpose while at the same time recovering the substances produced in the process as a matrix for fertilizer, thus putting in place a virtuous cycle that reduces the overall consumption of freshwater, guarantees water availability to farmers, reduce soil drying out and the overall amount of additional fertilizers, is cost effective both for agri-food industries and farmers and, last but not least, is environmental and human-health friendly. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/swrips |
Urban water' |
| projects-536 |
1844 |
NPP-SOL |
MODELLING AND TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS TO PREVENT SURFACE AND GROUND-WATER BODIES FROM AGRICULTURAL NON-POINT SOURCE POLLUTION UNDER MEDITERRANEAN CONDITIONS |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2022 |
Water Management |
2023-10-01 |
2026-09-30 |
On going |
€ 002 623 499.21 |
NPP-SOL aims to prevent diffuse pollution of water resources due to Non-Point Source (NPS) agricultural pollutants under the Mediterranean soil and environmental conditions. Pollution of aquifers and surface waters (estuaries, lakes, wetlands) from agricultural sources is especially frequent in areas of intensive agriculture and livestock activity. The problem mainly arises from the concurrent effects of low efficiency in the use of both nutrients and irrigation water. NPP-SOL adopts site-specific approaches and consciously refuse one-sized and multipurpose solutions, not suited to the complexity of the NPS agricultural pollution. Accordingly, NPP-SOL integrates Site-Specific Best Management Practices (SSBMPs) to improve soil, water, fertilizers, and crop management with site-tailored and affordable-cost technologies to prevent natural bodies pollution (Pollution-Preventing Technologies -PPTs). Both SSBMP and PPT aims at intercepting and removing NPS pollutants before reaching the groundwater and surface water bodies. Common to all the adopted methodologies-technologies will be their sustainability, economic efficiency, and adherence to circular economy approach. Technologies such as Bioreactors and Constructed Wetlands will be set up to remove nutrients and pesticides from surface runoff and/or drainage water coming from agricultural fields. Anaerobic Digestors will treat livestock slurries before spreading them to the soil. Modelling Tools will be developed by integrating 1) the agro-hydrological model FLOWS (FLOws of Water and Solute transport in heterogeneous agricultural and environmental systems) for predicting water and pollutants fluxes in agricultural systems and 2) the bio-economic model DAHBSIM (Dynamic Agricultural Household Bio-economic SImulation Model) to analyze farm objectives and resources allocation patterns related to economic, production (including livestock), and consumption decisions. Technical Capacity Building assets of technicians from key stakeholders guarantee the application and spreading of the NPP-SOL outputs, the monitoring of the effectiveness of applied technologies, and the maintenance and fine-tuning over time. NPP-SOL is implemented in four Case Studies (Israel, Italy, Morocco and Spain). |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/npp-sol |
Groundwater', 'Rivers and estuaries', 'Lake', 'Wetlands' |
| projects-537 |
1849 |
NATMed |
Nature-based Solutions on existing infrastructures for resilient Water Management in the Mediterranean |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2022 |
Water Management |
2023-04-01 |
2026-03-31 |
On going |
€ 004 089 297.50 |
The overall objective of NATMed is to develop, apply and validate a set of NbS, combined into Full Water-Cycle – NbS (FWC-NbS) and integrated into existing grey and natural water infrastructures and based on specific phases of the water cycle, in order to optimize the water- related and water-dependent ecosystem services. These FWC-NbS will be demonstrated on five implementation Cases Studies (Spain, Greece, Italy, Turkey and Algeria) to involve different climatic regions, water infrastructures and stages of the water cycle. Each of the FWC-NbS will be co-design and co-created with local stakeholders involved in the water management (from process developers, solution providers –SMEs-, regulator entities, National and Regional regulations and frameworks, policy makers, governance promoters, Mediterranean Community to end-users). All the stakeholders from the five case studies will form the NATMed Mediterranean Community of Practice (MedCoP) which aims to empower the stakeholders and local communities at the Mediterranean Sea Basin level. The combination of the knowledge from the Case Studies, the Assessment Framework and the MedCoP will develop different materials, such as training programmes, business models, FWC-NbS Catalogue & Implementation Guidelines and a Decision-making tool in order to replicate the solutions validated in the Case Studies by the IUCN Global Standard. Besides, a comprehensive decision-making tool will be developed to support authorities and policy makers in the process of FWC-NbS implementation and approaching ecological, economic, cultural and social perspectives. The project will last 3 years and will be developed through 7 Work Packages: FWC-NbS framework; Case Studies implementation; Monitoring and evaluation; FWC-NbS validation and NATMed assets for decision-making; Replicability and Clustering; Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation and Project Coordination. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/natmed |
Urban water', 'Coastal waters' |
| projects-538 |
1456 |
Sustain-COAST |
Sustainable coastal groundwater management and pollution reduction through innovative governance in a changing climate |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2018 |
Water Management |
2019-06-01 |
2023-05-31 |
Completed |
€ 002 200 612.24 |
The need for the implementation of innovative governance of coastal aquifers taking into account the technological development as well as socio-economic factors, has become a worldwide necessity. In compliance with the challenges and scope of the PRIMA call topic 1.1.2 “Sustainable, integrated water management”, Sustain-COAST was designed to explore innovative governance approaches of coastal aquifers among multiple water users and beneficiaries, under the uncertainties posed by the changing climate conditions, in four Mediterranean countries. Sustain-COAST “Sustainable coastal groundwater management and pollution reduction through innovative governance in a changing climate” is an R&I project co-funded under the PRIMA 2018 programme section II, for a period of 3 years starting from June 2019. Sustain-COAST consortium is led by the technical university of Crete (TUC) and is composed of a multidisciplinary team of seven partners from six countries. Sustain-COAST intends to develop a calibrated multi-criteria decision supporting system (DSS) and a web Geographical Information System platform accessible for water stakeholders and policy makers. The DSS and platform, combined with a specific animation activity will allow: i) the engagement of social actors in a learning process around water issues at catchment scale based on visualization of interactive thematic maps, ii) the use of advanced technologies and tools, such as optical sensors and remote sensing capacities for a participatory monitoring of water, iii) the use of calibrated numerical models for the time-space simulation of water quantity and quality progress. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/sustain-coast |
Groundwater', 'Coastal waters', 'Urban water' |
| projects-539 |
1495 |
SWATCH |
Strategies for increasing the WATer use efficiency of semi-arid Mediterranean watersheds and agrosilvopastoral systems under climate Change |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2018 |
Water Management |
2020-01-01 |
2023-12-31 |
Completed |
€ 001 615 730.00 |
The SWATCH project aims to develop and apply innovative methodologies to increase the social-ecological Water Use Efficiency of managed ecosystems along the Mediterranean biome and climate types, in the face of drier and more extremes climates. The SWATCH project relies on 9 study sites which cover a wide range of spatial scales, climate, and ecosystems. Case studies will examine the Mediterranean Sea basin from west to east providing the exceptional opportunity to develop and compare water resources management and planning strategies and develop a wide monitoring network for contrasting climate conditions (mean annual rain from 35 to 780 mm/y) in the Mediterranean region. SWATCH activities are structured into seven interconnected work packages, including WP1 on management and WP7 on dissemination and communication. WP2 deals with the Monitoring of experimental fields and hydrological basins, addressing innovative methodologies for EvapoTranspiration (ET) measurements in typical heterogeneous Mediterranean agrosilvopastoral systems and agricultural environments. It includes innovative eco-hydrologic monitoring approaches in ephemeral rivers and wadis along the Mediterranean biome and climate types, establishing a transnational Mediterranean river monitoring system. WP3 focuses on Ecohydrological modelling. It uses outcomes from WP2 to address innovative ecohydrologic models at several spatial scale. WP4 includes the acquisition of satellite images and the development of a data assimilation systems for assimilating remotely sensed and field data into ecohydrological models at the watershed or agricultural district scales for optimal characterization of soil water balances and the underlying water use efficiency. The data assimilation systems will be integrated in the VDM LSM developed within WP2. WP5 includes the development of land cover change strategies under actual and future climate change scenarios for optimizing the use of water resources, while WP6 includes the development and improvement of water management and planning systems for the optimization of the water infrastructures and uses. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/swatch |
Rivers and estuaries', 'Coastal waters', 'Water reservoir', 'Urban water', 'Wetlands' |
| projects-540 |
1597 |
TALANOA-WATER |
Talanoa Water Dialogue for Transformational Adaptation to Water Scarcity Under Climate Change |
PRIMA |
PRIMA-2020 |
Water Management |
2021-06-01 |
2025-05-31 |
Completed |
€ 002 462 931.25 |
The objective of TALANOA-WATER is to inform and catalyze the adoption of robust transformational adaptation strategies to water scarcity under climate change that contribute to the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) targets of social equity, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability. To this end, TALANOA-WATER will develop a groundbreaking ecosystem of innovation that combines an inclusive and transparent stakeholder engagement method, the Talanoa Dialogue, with an actionable modeling framework inspired in interdisciplinary socio-hydrology science, so to design, realize and demonstrate performance of transformational adaptation strategies at various scales (from plot to basin, from user to economic sector). Specifically, TALANOA-WATER will explore transformational adaptation strategies that combine complementary and mutually reinforcing (1) nature-based solutions (e.g. natural water retention), (2) technological innovation and climate services (e.g. non-traditional water sources, irrigation services advising the timing and intensity of irrigation and optimal protection of crops against extreme climate events), (3) risk management and financing instruments (e.g. payment for ecosystem services, insurance) and (4) economic and behavioral incentives (e.g. water charges, water markets). The flexibility and replicability of TALANOA-WATER ecosystem of innovation is an asset that facilitates its wide application across different areas, and will be illustrated in six water scarce pilot water laboratories in the Mediterranean Basin: the lower Nile River Basin (RB) in Egypt, the Po RB in Italy, the HĂ©rault Department in France, the Upper Litani Catchment in Lebanon, the Cega Catchment in Spain and the Jeffara Catchment in Tunisia. |
https://mel.cgiar.org/projects/talanoa-water |
Rivers and estuaries', 'Water reservoir', 'Urban water' |
