The kickoff meeting of the WATER4MED project, funded by the PRIMA-2023 call, section 2, took place on July 11 and 12 in Barcelona, Spain.
The meeting was organized by IDAEA-CSIC, the consortium coordinator. During the two days of the meeting:
- The partners presented their institutions, teams, and study sites.
- The WP leaders presented the work packages.
- The partners discussed management issues related to the evolution and implementation of the project.
- Some relevant tools for the development of the project were presented.
The project officer of PRIMA, Marco Orlando, attended the meeting and gave some advice for the proper development of the project. Maurizio Casarci also attended the meeting as a representative of the NGO ISTITUTO PER LA COOPERAZIONE UNIVERSITARIA (ICU), which will collaborate in the development of the project.
In summary, the project draws inspiration from the pressure on water resources that is rapidly increasing due to climate change and population growth.
As a result, water shortages are expected in the near future. Furthermore, the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme climate events will increase, alternating periods of drought with extreme rainfall that could cause floods.
In this context, there is a need to develop and incorporate robust and advanced approaches and tools into water governance models to enable the definition of best practices and the design of efficient and sustainable water management strategies.
WATER4MED aims to (i) develop robust numerical tools by coupling hydrological and hydrogeological models to realistically estimate the evolution of water resources under the impact of climate change and increasing demand, (ii) propose new approaches to assess the resilience capacity of water systems against climate events, (iii) apply advanced methods to assess the vulnerability and quality of water bodies, paying special attention to contaminants of emerging concern, (iv) assess the suitability of flood-MAR to minimize flooding and increase water storage, and (v) incorporate data and approaches from WATER4MED into integrative tools for water resources management. WATER4MED will be developed in 4 study sites (Spain, Tunisia, Portugal and Morocco) and validated in two other Mediterranean countries (Lebanon and Jordan), from which Lebanon is not represented in the consortium.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that WATER4MED will reduce future water-related conflicts by providing tools and data to improve governance models such as (i) information on water availability, (ii) monitoring and modeling-based methods to understand the evolution of water resources in the context of climate change, (iii) techniques to increase water storage and minimize flooding, and (iv) preserve the quality and quantity of water resources.
For further information contact: maurizio.casarci@icu.it
