Our story
Our story begins in the Mediterranean area where water scarcity brings big challenges to water users.
Our human activities, especially in agriculture, weaken the environment because of pollutants used to improve agricultural yields. Moreover, due to climate change the availability of water is disturbed and implies changing our consumption habits.
There is the water we see, in our lakes and rivers or falling from the sky, but there is also a shyer water, the one hidden in our soil. Because it’s not visible, the underground water is less considered in the water management.
WHY ?
Why is it so important to protect the aquifers?
Underground waters represent a very huge source for human activities, especially for drinking water or irrigation. They are part of the natural water cycle and linked to the rivers to which they provide important support especially during summer when the water level is low
So, how helping the water users to make the appropriate decisions to manage water in their territory?
To make decisions aimed at improving the environmental dimension of socioeconomic activities, territories and water stakeholders need to have access to hydrogeological data. And to allow that, it is necessary to have an available smart comprehensive system for monitoring and interpreting hydrogeological datas on the behavior of aquifers.
This is the aim of CLESPYDRA project!
WHAT ?
In our project, we want to provide adapted and user-friendly tools to help the water users to take the right decisions by integrating scientific data and models in their water management.
First, we identify and evaluate the existing tools to monitor aquifers because we need to identify what is missing to improve the water management. It’s what we call: Assessment of monitoring capacities in pilot areas and identification of key gaps
Then, we are developing new monitoring tools to complete the gaps and facilitate the interpretation data for users. It’s our 2nd activity: Tools development for groundwater data monitoring and interpretation
To be sure that the new monitoring tools are adapted to real conditions and to the local need, we are testing it into the Mediterranean context by Piloting in real conditions
Finally, to support the implementation and acceptability of these new tools, it’s necessary also to improve the knowledge around the underground waters by involving all stakeholders and help them to better understand aquifer behaviors. It’s the Capacity building and social awareness of the CLEPSYDRA project
To achieve our goals, we are creating 4 living labs that involve the representative of the quadruple helix: public authorities, industry sector, academics and civil society. To facilitate the replication of the solutions, we are designing a data collection and screening protocol of the groundwater networks. We are developing a Decision Support System (DSS) to help water users to take informed decisions. And finally, we are developing some pedagogic tools around aquifers behavior.
OUR VISION
Our vision is to simplify access to scientific datas for water users and to build cross fertilization by sharing experiences and results on different situations, to address collectively the issue of aquifer management.
We are CLEPSYDRA Project. We are 9 partners coming from Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Malta and Greece. We are Europeans. And we are concerned by water scarcity. And we are working together during 33 months to build a more sustainable future regarding water management in our Mediterranean area.
