Although a lot of science has been produced on Water Resource Management (WRM) in the Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) sector, WRM is still poorly addressed via scientific means. Some reasons for
this may be: the underrated importance given to this topic at political and decision-making level; the low-capacity
of the research environment to transfer results; and missing numerical modelling capacities at agencies and
governing authorities.
ICT may provide tools for water planning and management, as discussed within the ICT4WATER cluster initiative.
Among these, GIS-integrated numerical modeling is a robust method to represent hydrological systems and to
provide answers to problems of protection of groundwater resources. Because these tools require a high level
of knowledge pertaining to various disciplines, they are often disregarded as complex “tricky games” providing
unrealistic results. This is a barrier to the uptake of technologies for water management.
To overcome this issue, the application of ICT tools has been combined with an innovative participatory approach,
and large capacity building activities, in the framework of the H2020 FREEWAT project (FREE and open source
software tools for WATer resource management; www.freewat.eu). The major result of the project consists in an
open source and public domain, QGIS-integrated modeling platform for promoting WRM.
FREEWAT capabilities have been demonstrated at 14 case studies in EU and non-EU Countries, where the
effectiveness of few measures foreseen in River Basin Management Plans for achieving good status of water
bodies was tested.
At each case study, a Focus Group (FG) participated by local stakeholders (e.g., river basin authorities, research
institutions, environmental protection agencies, environmental associations) was formed and seven meetings were
organized. During these meetings, the objective of each case study, the methodology to be adopted, including
definition of the conceptual model and of data needed, were discussed. The FG also took decisions on scenarios
to be simulated for testing the feasibility of the foreseen measures. FGs aimed at demonstrating that WRM may
be performed with open source and public domain software and participants’ perception on using ICT tools for
WRM was discussed.
Some of the implemented models are now being used for operational purposes: Vrbansky plato (Slovenia),
where FREEWAT is used to monitor remediation of heating oil spillage and the water supply company intends to
maintain and use developed groundwater flow model for managed groundwater recharge with induced riverbank
filtration; the Bremerhaven case study (Germany), where the local water authority intends to use the developed
groundwater flow model for predictions; the Scarlino-Follonica case study (Italy), where the model will be used by
the regional authority to manage private groundwater remediation projects in a large industrial contaminated site;
the Gozo case study (Malta), where the model is being developed to support the assessment of good groundwater
quantitative status as part of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive