Water Resources Management Under Drought Conditions: Criteria and Tools for Conjunctive Use of Conventional and Marginal Waters in Mediterranean Regions

- Water resources management in arid and semiarid region is a complex, multifaceted task due to the many hydrological, environmental, and management factors that need to be integrated in order to provide to all users from different sectors sufficient supplies of adequate quality while ensuring the necessary level of environmental protection.

- Specifically, scarcity of conventional water resources in arid and semi-arid regions promotes the search for additional sources (i.e., unconventional or marginal waters) such as deep groundwater, treated wastewater, saline or brackish water, and for practices, such as advanced irrigation technologies and water harvesting, for reducing demands and satisfying water requirements. Furthermore, drought events, that often occur in Mediterranean countries, amplify water management problems and require long-term measures to reduce the water systems vulnerability, and short-term measures to mitigate drought impacts.

- The project will be carried out by seven partners from six Mediterranean countries with the overall goal of increasing the scientific background and developing technological tools for improving water resources management and environmental control in drought-prone Mediterranean regions, addressing the exigency of integrated water management and environmental protection, as already highlighted in the European Commission water policies and directives.

- Particular attention will be devoted to the definition of criteria for an efficient use of marginal water resources (in particular the reuse of treated waste water for irrigation and the withdrawal of deep groundwater considered as emergency resource) and the development of modeling tools and Decision Support System (DSS).

- These criteria and tools could support the choice of the preferable mix of long-term and short-term measures for water management under normal and drought emergency conditions.