Project Title: Sustainable coastal groundwater management and pollution reduction through innovative governance in a changing climate. 

Site: sustain-coast.tuc.gr

About the Project

The need for the implementation of innovative governance of coastal aquifers taking into account the technological development as well as socio-economic factors, has become a worldwide necessity. In compliance with the challenges and scope of the PRIMA call topic 1.1.2 “Sustainable, integrated water management”, Sustain-COAST was designed to explore innovative governance approaches of coastal aquifers among multiple water users and beneficiaries, under the uncertainties posed by the changing climate conditions, in four Mediterranean countries.

Sustain-COAST “Sustainable coastal groundwater management and pollution reduction through innovative governance in a changing climate” is an R&I project co-funded under the PRIMA 2018 programme section II, for a period of 3 years starting from June 2019. Sustain-COAST consortium is led by the technical university of Crete (TUC) and is composed of a multidisciplinary team of seven partners from six countries.

Sustain-COAST intends to develop a calibrated multi-criteria decision supporting system (DSS) and a web Geographical Information System platform accessible for water stakeholders and policy makers. The DSS and platform, combined with a specific animation activity will allow: i) the engagement of social actors in a learning process around water issues at catchment scale based on visualization of interactive thematic maps, ii) the use of advanced technologies and tools, such as optical sensors and remote sensing capacities for a participatory monitoring of water, iii) the use of calibrated numerical models for the time-space simulation of water quantity and quality progress.

Source of funding: PRIMA 2018

Role of NRD UNISS: Leader of WP4 “Innovative governance”. NRD provides methodological support to the other Partners on stakeholder engagement,participatory and innovative approaches, as well as the mediation of environmental conflicts. NRD-UNISS also provides specific expertise on water resource management from agronomic and hydrogeological perspectives and coordinates the living lab on sustainable water management in the coastal areas in Sardinia.

NRD Scientific Responsible: Prof. Pier Paolo Roggero

Partnership:

GREECE: Technical University of Crete  –  GERMANY: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research  –  FRANCE: Euro-Mediterranean Information System on know-how in the Water sector – University of Strasbourg  –  TUNISIA: Water Research and Technologies Center  –  TURKEY: University of Mersin  –  ITALY: Desertification Research Center