Descrizione del progetto
Mappatura della disponibilità e conformità globale dell’acqua per ottimizzarne l’uso
La scarsità di acqua dolce dovrebbe influenzare gravemente la sicurezza alimentare globale nei prossimi anni. La distribuzione intelligente dell’acqua costituisce ora una priorità. Il progetto WaterSENSE, finanziato dall’UE, affronterà le azioni immediate necessarie per documentare la disponibilità di acqua e ottimizzarne l’uso fornendo servizi di mappatura pertinenti a livello globale. I risultati delle informazioni che combinano metodi di osservazione della Terra, modelli idrologici e dati locali saranno ampiamente accessibili. Un altro valore aggiunto del progetto sarà un servizio di «verifica delle acque», che monitora la conformità degli usi locali rispetto alle normative e ai diritti in materia di acque. Le applicazioni iniziali si svolgeranno in Australia, Paesi Bassi e Sudafrica. Si prevede un ampliamento dei servizi di informazione WaterSENSE con l’uso di funzionalità avanzate, come gli algoritmi di elaborazione dei megadati.
Obiettivo
Shortages of freshwater will be one of the most pressing problems in feeding the world this century. To optimize use of available water it is important to distribute it wisely over the various competing interests, in particular agriculture, which is responsible for 70% of all freshwater use. Irrigation is currently often unsustainable, while groundwater reserves are becoming depleted and many places in the world are suffering water shortages. Action is therefore required now to use space and in-situ monitoring systems, to create a better sense of water availability and optimise use across the planet. WaterSENSE will provide water-availability and mapping services for any place in the world at different time and space resolutions, based on integrated Copernicus data, hydrological models and local data. The results of these services will be open access so as to further develop value-adding services. WaterSENSE itself will deliver the essential value-added service of monitoring compliance of local water use against water rights and regulations (‘water auditing’). The first application will be in the multi-climate Murray-Darling Basin in Australia, followed by validation in South Africa and the Netherlands. Consortium partners already provide water-availability and water-auditing services in the latter two countries. Novel research in the project will develop scalable information services, based on advanced big-data processing algorithms, to determine variables such as evapotranspiration, irrigation water use, rainfall and soil moisture, as well as machine learning to allow automatic data processing and reduce uncertainty in the hydrological variables determined. DIAS services for data provision, as well as cloud hosting and processing of computational services, will be developed and implemented. Existing successful partnership models will be refined to ensure service providers in the water value chain achieve healthy business development.
Campo scientifico
- engineering and technologycivil engineeringwater engineeringirrigation
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyplanetary sciencesplanets
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata processing
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- H2020-EU.2.1.6. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Space Main Programme
- H2020-EU.2.1.6.1. - Enabling European competitiveness, non-dependence and innovation of the European space sector
- H2020-EU.2.1.6.4. - Enabling European research in support of international space partnerships
- H2020-EU.2.1.6.3. - Enabling exploitation of space data
Meccanismo di finanziamento
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinatore
6703 CT Wageningen
Paesi Bassi
L’organizzazione si è definita una PMI (piccola e media impresa) al momento della firma dell’accordo di sovvenzione.