Project: Adapting to Climate change by QUantifying optimal Allocation of resOUrces and socio-ecoNomic inTerlinkages

Acronym	ACQUAOUNT
Duration	01/07/2021 - 31/08/2025
Project Topic	Issues related to water run across multiple sectors and methods to improve its efficient use are considered to have a high return on investments with important multiplier effects on nearly all sectors. According to the SDG 6.5.1 baseline, the degree of development of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) strongly varies among countries and each country presents different criticalities. Further development of IWRM in Mediterranean countries is urgent as Climate Change (CC) projections foresee a reduction and degradation of water resources, while water demand for irrigation is projected to increase driven by an increase in food demand linked to population growth and CC itself. Agriculture is by far the most water demanding sector and a sustainable IWRM cannot be achieved without improving water use efficiency at farm level. On the other hand, improved methods to manage multiple resources (e.g. groundwater, grey water, re-use water) and effectively allocate water to satisfy demands from all sectors are essential to increase water use efficiency at basin and country level, leading to preservation of ecosystems and avoiding over exploitation of water resources. A shared vision exists that digitalization of the water sector is an effective tool to understand the multitude of interdependencies and thus analyse and manage highly complex systems. As such, digitalization holds the potential to positively affect multiple dimensions of water management, including water accounting, intra and inter-sector coordination, financing, governance, faster implementation of new policies and directives. ACQUAOUNT develops and deploys a Web of Things (WoT) platform that uses System Dynamic Modelling tools to integrate data from a digital sensor network (at farm and basin level) and supporting data of multiple types (e.g. Remote sensing, Geo-databases of soil type and crop distribution) and provide information on the behaviour of the physical system. Furthermore, the WoT platform integrates socio-economic data (e.g. costs, revenues and employment) and uses Life Cycle Thinking approaches and a Knowledge Elicitation Engine to provide synthetic and meaningful information. The WoT platform thus provides two real-time services: 1) a service for farmers for optimal irrigation and scheduling accounting for crop type and agricultural practices. 2) a service for water managers for real-time monitoring and seasonal projections of water demands and supplies able to alert multiple actors in case of criticalities. Finally, the embedded and calibrates model in the WoT platform is used to provide a Decision Support Tool for decision makers for long-term planning and development of CC adaptation strategies by comparing results of simulation under alternative development scenarios as new infrastructures for use of recycled water, agricultural practices and policies. ACQUAOUNT demonstrates its IWRM model at basin scale in four Mediterranean countries (Italy, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia) where the Sensor network and the WoT platform is co-designed with local stakeholders using a Multi- Actor Approach to ensure coherence of the services and the DST with the specific needs and plans of each country. Furthermore, ACQUAOUNT undertakes activities to ensure that the WoT platform is properly integrated in each country policyframework and provides non-profit and profit-oriented business models for each pilot site as well as for the future scaling-up across the Mediterranean to facilitate the uptake of the technological solutions identified by the project.
Website	visit project website
Network	PRIMA
Call	Section 1 Call 2020 - Water Management

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici	Coordinator	Italy
2	University of Sassari	Partner	Italy
3	Nature 4.0 Soc. Benefit Srl	Partner	Italy
4	ABINSULA SRL	Partner	Italy
5	FUNDACIO EURECAT	Partner	Spain
6	MEDITERRANEAN INFORMATION OFFICE FOR ENVIRONMENT CULTURE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (as host Institute for GWP-Med)	Partner	Greece
7	National Agricultural Research Center	Partner	Jordan
8	Lebanese Agriculture Research Institute	Partner	Lebanon
9	Institut des Regions Arides	Partner	Tunisia