Newsletter 04 May 2018

The Water JPI 2017 Joint Call, funded by 12 countries, on “Water resource management in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals” covers two topics:

multiple pressure effects on ecosystems and ecosystem services as well as effective mitigation – adaptation tools and assessments for implementing the water related targets of the UN SDGs;

developing accessible solutions for clean water management to address UN SDG6 targets and associated SDGs.

67 pre-proposals applied to this call for collaborative transnational research. After evaluation on the scientific excellence and impact criteria, 37 consortia are invited to submit a full proposal.

The Water JPI held its 12th Governing Board meeting in Larnaca (Cyprus) last May 9 2018.
The meeting hosted by the Research Funding Agency of Cyprus (RPF), has been the occasion of reviewing the progress done within the JPI:
the proposals of future calls for the European Framework Programme, the launch of the Knowledge Hub on Emerging Pollutants, the intermediate results of the 2017 and 2018 calls for proposals or the organisation of the second Water JPI conference.
The Governing Board (GB) approved the renewal 2018 of five scientific and technological board members, the creation of a task force on infrastructures, the proposed procedure for the revision of the vision document and of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda in 2019.
The presentation of PRIMA, by Diego Intriglio, Senior Advisor, launched discussion with the GB, highlighting the actions to be strengthened in the future by the two initiatives.

The 16 projects funded under the 2015 JPI call are met in Larnaca last May 8 for their mid-term review. An occasion to present their  intermediate results and exchange with the follow-up group members in charge of the evaluation for the funding agencies involved in the call.
These projects addressed technological solutions and services for water systems:

1. for water treatment, reuse, recycling and desalination;
2. for water resources management; and
3. to mitigate impacts of extreme events (floods and droughts) at catchment scale.

The follow-up group composed by members of the evaluation panel and the Water JPI scientific and technological board monitored the progress of the cofunded call projects throughout their lifetime, providing advice where needed on project implementation and contractual requirements. The networking after each session of project presentations allowed to foster coordination and future cooperation among all the funded projects.
The presentation of WaterWorks2014 cofunded projects results are available on the Water JPI website.

The AfriAlliance advisory board met in Paris at the International River Basins Organisation (INBO) offices the 24^th of April 2018. The advisory board provides advices on directions to be followed during the implementation of the project, taking the perspective of complementary expertises of the stakeholders involved (Joint Research Center, Water JPI, Suez Environnement, African Ministerial Council on Water, NET WERC H20, EURAQUA / KIC Climate, UNDP / Cap-Net).
The main objective was to exchange on the main progress done during the 2nd year of the project and discuss the work plan for the upcoming months. Out of the main achievements:

the development of the five action groups launched the first year of the project, four dealing with irrigation and harvesting, one on integrated water resources management and ethics;

the policy brief entitled ‘Strengthening the capacity of African stakeholders to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 amidst Climate Change’, published after consultation of 35 citizens organisations;

a synthesis of the constraints and opportunities for using/collocate monitoring technologies (from satellite observations to surface station observations and newly citizen water point observatories.

Freshwater access is fundamental in key aspects of human life. Groundwater is a strategic resource for drinking water supply and is essential for ecosystem quality, energy and food security. This natural resource is endangered by several factors,
including over-exploitation and contamination by anthropogenic activities. These elements severely affect the water-energy-food nexus, with critical environmental, sociological and economic consequences. WE-NEED (WatEr NEEDs, availability, quality and sustainability) is a 3-year project financed under the ERA-NET WaterWorks2014 Cofunded Call. The project started on 20th April 2016. It is co-ordinated by the Politecnico di Milano (Prof. Monica Riva, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering) and includes as partners the Weizmann Institute of Science (PI: Prof. Brian Berkowitz, Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences), the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (PI: Prof. Daniel Fernandez Garcia, Dept. of Civil Engineering and Environmental) and the Universidade de Aveiro (PI: Prof. Susana Loureiro, Dept. Biology & Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies).
The goal of WE-NEED is to develop new management strategies to assist in the sustainable use of two key components of groundwater resources: pumping wells, used to obtain water for drinking purposes, and natural springs, typically employed for crop irrigation as well as for recreational use. We adopt a probabilistic risk assessment approach aimed at increasing confidence in decision making through quantification of risk. Activities are grounded on observations linked to two sites in Italy.

These sites are archetypal of two distinct realities and can be considered representative of diverse environmental settings and conditions of Europewide interest. During the first 18 months, the WENEED team has collected and analyzed available geological and hydrological data for the two field sites and developed flow models characterized by increasing complexity. The impact of uncertain parameters and boundary conditions on (i) aquifer characterization and (i) the uncertainty in predicting target variables has been assessed.
A new statistical model for the interpretation of hydrological properties has been developed. The model allows one to estimate, accurately and efficiently, all relevant hydrogeological parameters by analyzing jointly sample moments of data and incremental series.
Protocols for synthesis, characterization and detection of several emerging contaminants
have been developed and ecotoxicity tests have been performed. Planned future activities of WE-NEED include the quantification of the effect of multiple sources of uncertainty on sustainable management and protection of groundwater. These will lead to (i) assessment of the contaminant-specific vulnerability of aquifer systems, and (ii) improved, physically-based risk assessment and water management protocols, and (iii) assess the environmental effects of complex chemical mixtures.

Between 1998 and 2009, Europe suffered over 213 major damaging floods causing more than 1100 casualties, the displacement of about half a million people and at least €52 billion in insured economic losses. Conversely, droughts cause annual economic losses of 6.2 billion €/year on average, with losses increasing in recent decades.
Unfortunately, climate change is intensifying climate extremes such as floods and droughts, which are expected to increase even more in the future. In this context is essential to improve the scientific knowledge and strengthening drought and flood forecasting and early warning to improve adaptation to climate change.
To help this effort, we create the IMDROFLOOD (Improving Drought and Flood Early Warning,
Forecasting and Mitigation using real-time hydroclimatic indicators) project (financed by WaterWorks 2014) with the main objective of enhance flood and drought risk management at the catchment level through the development of novel flood and drought information tools.
IMDROFLOOD includes research institutes, universities and companies from six countries (Spain, Portugal, Estonia, Romania, Moldova and South Africa) and it is focused on five river basins which have contrasting environmental conditions and specific problems (Tagus, Ebro Prut, Emajõgi and Limpopo).
IMDROFLOOD activities during the first half of the project have achieved some project millstones.
One of the most important has been the effective engagement of stakeholders. The constant communication and three stakeholders meeting have allowed understanding stakeholders and end-users needs. During the first months of the project a complete collection of data sources in each basin has been collected and implemented in a Spatial Data Infrastructure, to share data among the project partners (private side) and to disseminate the products of the project. We have developed climatic drought indices at the most detailed spatial resolution and the longest temporal possible perspective in all studied basins (see monitordesequia for Spanish results). Furthermore we have computed remote sensing indices and land cover information to monitor drought. These indices have been used to improve our understanding of crop yield management under dry conditions. Another task has been the calibration of the Regional Hydro-Ecologic Simulation System (RHESSys), this model is especially sensitive to vegetation process. Currently we are simulating droughts and floods under different vegetation scenarios to understand its impact on the river flow.
On the other hand we have developed a new probabilistic forecasting strategy, coupling dynamic and statistical models, seeking the improvement of weather forecasts for the next 15 days. We are working in the incorporation of the forecasting of Atmospheric Rivers for predicting high amounts of precipitation.
The next steps of the IMDROFLOOD project are oriented to integrate the weather forecasting with the hydrological models, and to create drought and flood monitoring and early warning systems.
In this line we have conceptualized the first version of the early warning systems including the recommendations of stakeholders and endusers to improve the potential usefulness of the systems.