Open in October 2009, The 2nd IWRM-NET joint Call aimed to establish trans-national collaborative research projects that support policy and promote trans-disciplinary approaches to improve IWRM across Europe. The focus of the 2nd Call was on developing strategies and solutions to meet the various challenges connected to climate change, droughts and water scarcity and economics for IWRM. On climate the following research projects have been selected:
ICARUS - IWRM for Climate Change Adaptation in Rural Social Ecosystems in Southern Europe, (Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per I Cambiamenti Climatici S.c.a.r.l.),
ESAWADI - Utilizing the Ecosystem Services Approach for Water Framework Directive Implementation. (Asconit Consultants),
Water Cap and Trade - Water Market scenarios for Southern Europe: new solutions for dealing with water scarcity and drought risk. (France, Italy, Spain)
Water2Adapt - Resilience enhancement and water demand management for climage change adaptation. (Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal)
The Integrated Water management can be divided into different phases, generally linked to different time scales:
· Strategic management, at a time step of several years: at this scale, one has to decide whether new infrastructures should be built, and where they should be.
· Tactical management, at a time step of several days/months: this management level defines water allocation rules between the existing infrastructures.
· Operational management, at a daily time step: how to open/close the gates according to the water allocation rules defined by the tactical management layer.
Climate change will have an impact on the three management levels. Therefore, it is highly important to involve decision-makers and stakeholders (from different horizons) since the beginning of the research to ensure they will take forward innovative adaptation strategies.