ABOUT US
The objective of the project is to improve farm and irrigation district water use efficiency and farm profitability developing a real-time operational water and economic management web-gis system for parsimonious and precise irrigation optimizing exact water use and relative water productivity, integrating farm analysis into irrigation district ones. The tool will allow to monitor and forecast the soil moisture behaviour to define the right irrigation volume, optimizing water and economic indicators. The tool supports different levels of stakeholder: i) farmers who control soil moisture avoiding plant water and saline stress, ii) irrigation consortia which allocates water among users; iii) water authorities which manage water withdraw from reservoirs. In addition, the tools present also the possibility to be used as simulator of water allocation supporting decision strategy in real time and for seasonal forecast scenarios. Multi satellite data, ground measurements, daily and seasonal meteorological forecast, soil water budget numerical modelling, crop growth model and economic analysis will support the tool. The proposed tool will be applied in different case studies of the Mediterranean area: Italy, Spain, Egypt Tunisia and Morocco and also in China, characterized by different climatic conditions, fresh and saline water availability, crop types, irrigation practices, polices and water pricing.
