Existing Solutions

Climate Change, Drinking Water Management, Water Resources Availability,spatial planning, Water Scarcity and Drought, Water Scarcity and Drought Indicators

technical

Institutional, Spatial Planning

Wiz + is an environmental programme co-financed by the European Union. The solution aims at assessing short and long term drinking water availability so that water data and environmental and infrastructural costs can be taken into consideration during the spatial planning process. This happens mainly through the creation of an IT platform useful for local authorities that will be involved in decision making.

In this context the IT platform takes homogeneous and comparable indicators into consideration to assess water scarcity and drought conditions. Thus, it involves both public and private bodies in the evaluation of local conditions and in the choice of strategies to face the most severe ws&d crises.

Municipalities, Regions and all decision makers that are involved in spatial planning will be able to take their decisions on the basis of on-line information about water demand, infrastructures’ estimated cost and all other relevant information concerning water resources.

Information on drinking water availability (present and future) in a certain area will be published online.

As a consequence citizens will be able to choose whether or not it is worth investing in real estate in an area where water resources are scarce.

Furthermore, the project foresees the implementation of a set of hydrologic parameters that can deliver useful and valuable information for the assessment of water scarcity and drought situations. The latter will support future scenarios forecasting due to political choices or climate change. In particular the project foresees the use of a unified set of hydrological parameters and indicators in order to compare and test different water scarcity and/or drought conditions, with focus on temporal and spatial scale for parameter estimation.

All services will be based on open technologies to allow their continuous development.

The project was launched in September 2010 and has a duration of 3 years

Italy (Arno River Basin) and Spain

The Arno River Basin Authority, Acque Spa, Ingegnerie Toscane Srl, Istituto Technologico de Galicia. These actors initiated the project and are currently involved in its implementation. Main driver: spatial planning decisions adapted to water resources availability therefore taking into consideration Climate Change. All actors were involved in the project since the beginning and will be involved in the project results’ dissemination phase at local level

Project is in an advanced stage. Partial application in operational cases

Key Question: if we  decide to build in this area is water available and what will be the financial/environmental costs? Wiz is an IT tool that will allow the assessment of drinking water availability in a certain area influencing decision making. Therefore local spatial planning decisions will be influenced by water availability information. Also, the platform will display a coherent and shared set of parameters in order to test solution hypotheses  for water scarcity and drought times. The solution can give an efficient contribution in terms of uniformity in the assessment of pros and cons associated with the different decisions that will be taken, in any case, by political decision makers

Development of a common, homogeneous and agreed set of parameters useful to decide among different developing scanarios and competitive mitigation actions. Possibility to carry out the cost/benefit assessment of the different choices.

Reliable water availability information (water is available, water is not available) and on water costs (environmental and financial).

In the long term: sustainable spatial planning.

Evaluation of the effects on different temporal scales (short, medium and long term) forecasting the possible invariance of external forcers (for example climate factors), or their positive or negative trend.

Possibility to monitor,in quantitative terms, the effects of already taken decisions

The implementation of WIZ project will influence spatial planning on the basis of water availability data,  taking into consideration climate change and water scarcity conditions.  Wiz will be available online  and  Municipalities all over the world will be able to use it. Local decision makers and citizens will be more informed on water availability in a certain area and citizens will be more informed on water availability in buildings. Therefore a main indicator of success could be the number of Municipalities that will effectively use the IT tool in their spatial planning procedures.

Generally speaking another success indicator can be the number of decisions taken on the basis of the proposed set of indicators on the whole basin or by each local administration or local stakeholder (municipality, facility service, …).

Any public administration or private stakeholder involved in water resource management. Public administrations, because of their legislative role, their reputation and their capacity to take  bigger and smaller stakeholders into account

A multidisciplinary team is needed, together with a standard set of ITC resources. A 12 months period can represent a good estimation for the temporal development of the project.  More detailed costs and resources estimation are related to the extension of project application.

Pilot Municipalities in the Provinces of Florence and Pisa and Provinces in Spain have committed to test WIZ. In long term application, the project can be extended to local and national agencies involved in water resources management

Gaia Checcucci. President of the Arno River Basin Authority.

Arno River Basin Authority

via dei Servi, 15

Florence- Italy

Phone 0039 055 26743204

Contact persons:

Technical Directors: Isabella Bonamini: i.bonamini@adbarno.it, Bernardo Mazzanti: b.mazzanti@adbarno.it

International Relations Office:Lucia Fiumi, l.fiumi@adbarno.it

Arno River Basin Authority Website:www.adbarno.it

Project’s website: www.wiz-life.eu

All information on the project can be found on the website

www.wiz-life.eu

A video on the project can be downloaded at this link

http://www.wiz-life.eu/images/e/ee/WIZ_Video_A.swf