MADFORWATER. WP5 Decision Support Tool for wastewater, water reuse and water and land management strategies in agriculture and WP6 Integration and assessment of water and land management strategies

Abstract

The data set includes collected and generated data used to upgrade the integrated hydro-agro-economic model developed in MADFORWATER WP3 to use it as a decision support tool (DST) for defining basin-scale strategies for water & land management in agriculture that integrates water reuse / irrigation technologies and related economic instruments, in order to improve the irrigation efficiency and enhance the treated WW reuse in agriculture. The DST aims at identifying the best management strategies by simulating different scenarios and it has been applied to the three case study areas of MADFORWATER: the irrigated farming system in the Kafr-El- Sheikh Region in Egypt, the citrus farming system in Souss-Massa region in Morocco and the permanent irrigated farming in the Nabeul Governorate in Tunisia. For each simulated scenario, the proposed model allows to identify optimal farmers’ choices related to cropping patterns and agro-techniques. The model also allows to estimate the effects of such choices on water consumption, water distribution among crops, land use changes and farmer income. In the simulated scenarios, the tool considers the impacts of irrigation technologies, increased water availability from wastewater reuse, and regulatory and economic instruments on the socio-economic and environmental systems. Simulated data predict the behavior of the tested innovative irrigation technologies and economic instruments. The data set contains also the elaboration of sustainable water & land management strategies in agriculture for the three case study areas of MADFORWATER. Each proposed strategy includes the identification and analysis of feasible and operational regulatory and economic instruments aimed at enhancing water reuse and the implementation of the efficient irrigation technologies developed in WP3. The strategies are delivered in the form of a report and are based upon qualitative data from policy and literature review, quantitative data from public data sources and collected by local teams, data collected during three fieldwork missions carried out in the region of Nabeul (Tunisia), qualitative information gathered in the MADFORWATER project’s stakeholder consultation workshops, and on results from the model-based Decision Support Tool (DST) developed in the project. Moreover, this data set includes the results of questionnaires and answer sheets provided by expert and stakeholder interviewed during MADFORWATER project for establishing integrated water & land management strategies and for evaluating the suitability of identified measures to overcome country specific barriers for the implementation of the proposed strategies. Potential users for this data include: (i) policy-makers or other decision-makers involved in water management and planning or agricultural policy development; (ii) researchers and companies active in the fields of treated wastewater reuse, water resources management, irrigation and agricultural and natural resource economics.