Water Supply Watershed Planning and Management: an Integrated Approach
Abstract:
WADI is a research project aimed at developing a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) for rational planning, operation and management of specific watersheds that are characterized by water scarcity and lack of groundwater. With the continual increase of water demand due to socio-economic growth in the Mediterranean regions, among others, water will play a more and more important role in the next millennium. In the next decades, the Mediterranean countries labeled as arid and semi-arid areas, especially the Southern Mediterranean countries will be highly concerned with water scarcity. The WADI project will focus on the development of tools and methodologies that can assist decision making in watershed management boards and water planning authorities having to determine where to locate new dams/reservoirs. The tools and methodologies will address the various elements related to reservoir identification (eg, geographic location, water volume, infrastructure cost) given the watershed characteristics (water demand requirements, water researches, DEM, etc) in an integrated manner that considers socio-economic issues as well as environmental aspects related to flood and drought risks. In addition, WADI will develop advanced data processing tools for modeling and simulations related to floods, reservoir design, and optimization of the complete planned network of a watershed.
Partners:
IACM-FORTH, Greece; INRIA-Rocquencourt; University of Calabria, Italy; ENP - Ecole Nationale Polytechnique d'Alger, Algeria; CREEN-Regional Centre for Water and Environment Beirut, Lebanon; ESIB-Ecole Supérieure des Ingénieurs de Beyrouth, Beirut, Lebanon; EUCLID Beirut, Lebanon; EMI - Ecole Mohammadia d'Ingénieurs, Rabat, Morocco; ONEP - Office national de l'Eau Potable, Rabat, Morocco, ERCIM.
Duration:
1 April 2001 – 31 March 2004
ERCIM's role:
Project co-ordinator
Total budget:
1 489 042 Euro
Funding Agencies:
European CommIssion, INCO-MED Programme (ICA3-1999-30016): 1,000,000 Euro