- Develop a risk-assessment model for prioritising measures
- Develop an innovative real-time monitoring network for tracking water quality
- Produce hydrological models to simulate runoff
- Develop a user-friendly decision-support system
- Conduct socioeconomic studies and produce environmentally sustainable recommendations for action to support operational management and governance bodies
- Develop a system of socioeconomic indicators to monitor and assess the degree to which the aim of sustainably using and managing water resources has been achieved
Relevance
Over the past few decades, water management has undergone a major paradigm shift. In particular, the concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM) has become a prominent guiding principle in water research and practice. A major criticism levelled at the IWRM concept, however, is the continuing difficulty of transferring the theoretical overall concept into methods that can be applied in practice. At the same time, technical advances in operational water governance are massively increasing the amount of data and information available. Unless people have access to suitable methods for meaningfully analysing and categorising this input, it will exacerbate uncertainty in water management. Multiple stakeholders, and numerous different methods and tools running in parallel are causing significant delays to decision-making processes in water management. This is where the joint research project comes in. It will develop integrated solutions for water resources management and governance by shortening the reaction times in institutions actively involved in water management. In doing so, it will make a substantial contribution to increasing good governance in the water sector.
More information about the joint research project is available here.