Project: An integrative information aqueduct to close the gaps between global satellite observation of water cycle and local sustainable management of water resources

Acronym	iAqueduct (Reference Number: WaterJPI-JC-2018_06)
Project Topic	An integrative information aqueduct (iAqueduct) is proposed to close the gaps between global satellite observation of water cycle and local needs of information for sustainable management of water resources. In the past decades, various satellite missions have been developed to monitor the global water cycle, in particular the variables related to precipitation, evapotranspiration and soil moisture, often at (tens of) kilometre scales of spatial resolution. Whilst these data are highly effective to characterise water cycle variation on regional to global scale, they are not suitable for sustainable management of water resource, which always needs more detailed information on local (e.g. in terms of information provided by an in-situ sensor, e.g. a TDR for soil moisture or a piezometer for groundwater level) and field scale. To effectively exploit existing knowledge at different scales we thus need to answer the following questions: How to downscale the global water cycle products to local scale? How to convert the coarse resolution data into fine scale water information at the management scale for water, vegetation and soil processes? And how to use such fine-scale water information to improve the management of soil and water resources? The envisioned iAqueduct aims to accomplish these goals combining EC/ESA Copernicus satellite data (with intermediate resolution) with high resolution Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) and in-situ observations to develop scaling functions for soil properties and soil moisture and evapotranspiration at meter scales. iAqueduct will integrate the various components from the global water cycle observation to local soil and water states in an open-source water information system and test and demonstrate their utility on pan-European scale at a set of carefully selected research sites for sustainable management of water resources. iAqueduct complements the actions developed under the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) by coordinating a set of European research groups and sites allowing the scaling up to pan-European level under the aegis of the COST action Harmonization of UAS techniques for agricultural and natural ecosystems monitoring (HARMONIOUS) in which 70 institutions from 32 countries participate.
Network	WaterWorks2017
Call	Water JPI 2018 Joint Call Closing the Water Cycle Gap

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	University of Twente	Coordinator	Netherlands
2	Universitat Politècnica de València	Partner	Spain
3	Hungarian Academy of Sciences	Partner	Hungary
4	Tel Aviv University	Partner	Israel
5	Università degli Studi della Basilicata	Partner	Italy
6	Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca "Ambiente" - University of Naples Federico II	Partner	Italy
7	Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences	Partner	Sweden