Integrated Water Resources Management under different hydrological, climatic and socio-economic conditions

Abstract

The International Water Research Alliance Saxony (IWAS) project (2009–2014) was dedicated to investigate global challenges concerning integrated water resources management (IWRM) in different model regions in Eastern Europe (region R1), Central and Southeast Asia (R2 and R3), the Middle East (R4) and Latin America (R5). This thematic issue compiles the most important scientific results of the second phase of the IWAS project which was introduced by Kalbus et al. (2012). The main results and lessons learned from the transdisciplinary IWRM project are presented in Seegert et al. (2014). The IWAS project was structured into the above-mentioned model regions (R1–5) and into cross-cutting topics: Q1—Model based scenario analysis, Q2—Technology development, Q3— Governance, and Q4—Capacity development (Fig. 1). The first cross-cutting topic Q1 was dedicated to modelbased scenario analysis of hydrological and climate related processes. Within the first project phase of IWAS a ToolBox for hydrological process simulation was developed and exemplary applied to the IWAS investigation regions (Kalbacher et al. 2012). The toolbox concept has been completed by invoking data integration as well as model visualization methods (Rink et al. 2014; Bilke et al. 2014). Within the second IWAS project phase, the toolbox has been extensively applied to several IWAS model regions: R1 (e.g. Fischer et al. 2014; Koerner et al. 2014; Pavlik et al. 2014), R2 (e.g. Karthe et al. 2014), R4 (e.g. Kloss et al. 2014; Graebe et al. 2013; Subagadis et al. 2014; Walther et al. 2014), R5 (e.g. Borges et al. 2014; Da Anunciacao et al. 2014; Goncalves et al. 2013) to address a variety of questions for surface water and groundwater management. More general works were Barfus and Bernhofer (2014) who applied global climate models (GCM) to different model regions and Pluntke et al. (2014) dealing with uncertainty in hydrological modeling due to data scarcity. The second cross-cutting topic Q2 was focused on technology development, implementation and transfer. Three work packages in Q2 were dealing with the Sewchar concept for sustainable sanitation systems (Fuehner et al. 2012), hydrothermal carbonization for treatment of domestic waste and sewage sludge (Poerschmann et al. 2014), and the development of multisensory systems for the detection of pathogens. The remaining transdisciplinary topics were dealing with aspects of governance (Q3) and capacity development (Q4). Dombrowsky et al. (2014) were discussing socioeconomic questions of water governance in transition countries as well as institutional and legal constraints for transboundary river basin management. Capacity development is an important method for the implementation of IWRM concepts (Leidel et al. 2014). As a result of the IWAS capacity development activities an E-learning platform has been established (Leidel et al. 2013, see http:// www.iwrm-education.de). IWAS Ukraine (R1) was dealing with a variety of IWRM aspects elaborating on socio-economic as well as natural science questions (Dombrowsky et al. 2014; Hagemann et al. 2014) discussing the role of water governance in transition countries as well as institutional and legal constraints on transboundary river basin management. A decision support concept was developed by Leidel et al. J. Seegert O. Kolditz (&) P. Krebs D. Borchardt Technische Universitat Dresden, Dresden, Germany e-mail: ees-editor@ufz.de