Editorial/Preface: Advances in water resources and water networks management under climate change conditions, seeking for efficiency

Abstract

This Special Issue of Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology – AQUA includes a collection of papers initially presented at the 2nd EWaS International Conference ‘Efficient & Sustainable Water Systems toward Worth Living Development’ . The conference was held on June 1–4, 2016, in Platanias/Chania, Crete, Greece (http://www.ewas2.tuc.gr/). The conference was co-organized by the University of Thessaly/Civil Engineering Department and the Technical University of Crete/School of Environmental Engineering. The EWaS series of conferences started in Thessaloniki in 2013. The 2nd EWaS International Conference highlighted the need to improve the efficiency and sustainability of water resources systems, threatened by the climate change conditions the whole world is experiencing today, leading to water scarcity and water intermittent supply. At the same time, it is estimated that almost 40% of Europe's available drinking water is being wasted through real (physical) losses occurring along the water supply and distribution networks. This makes the water scarcity threat even more intense. Thus, advances in water resources and water networks management under climate change conditions are needed, seeking for efficiency. Efficient management of water resources and water networks asks for advanced tools and strategies for their analysis, monitoring, planning and operation. Such tools and techniques are presented by the papers included in this Special Issue. More specifically: The paper by Colombani et al . (2017) deals with the impact of climate variability on the salinization of the coastal wetland-aquifer system of the Po Delta, Italy. To understand the hydrological processes occurring within the specific system, the contribution of both evaporation and anthropogenic factors to groundwater salinization was assessed. A time series (2002–2015) of monthly average climatic data and a temperature-salinity dataset were used in three adjacent saline-brackish lagoons to identify the actual evaporation patterns and predict future trends using artificial neural networks (ANN). Moreover, the use …