The total population of the Mediterranean region is expected to increase from 309 million in 2000 to over 651 million in 2030. If future global rainfall changes are compared to rising water demand as a consequence of population growth, the impact on water resources will be far greater than that of
MedWater work packages

System Characterization and Modelling
The basis for “real-time” optimization is a model of the “resource demand system”, which also includes the water requirements of the ecosystems. A transient double-continuum model of the mountain aquifer to simulate the behavior of the groundwater storage will be developed.

Scenarios and Indicators
To quantify the possible change in water resources as a function of external factors such as land use, climate change, regional water management strategies, or trade of virtual water via food, scenarios will be defined.

Virtual Water Flows
The amount of virtual water contained by the the food imported into Israel is quantified. Using the globally parameterised SWAT, not only the water footprint can be modeled, but also the impact of agricultural production on other ecosystem services in exporting countries.

Optimization
For the multicriteria optimization the verified causal chains will be transferred into transfer functions. The optimization takes into account competing goals such as: ecosystem services and indicators, water trade, biodiversity, water quality, costs, energy consumption and the availability of water resources.

Global transfer
The transfer includes the transfer of results to other areas with good infrastructure and long-term management experience in a regional context (Capodifume and Lez catchment areas) , and secondly the generalization of the indicators and the optimization process as a method.

Decision Support System
For the implementation of an event-oriented water resource management, web-based information systems are used as an interface between science and practice. These systems will be available to local stakeholders (water utilities, farmers and agricultural authorities, relevant economic enterprises, etc.).
Recent news

MedWater in the “Tagesspiegel”
Project coordinator Prof. Dr. Irina Engelhardt from the TU Berlin has talked to the Berlin newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel” about the MedWater project. You can read the article here, however, it is only available in German.

4th MedWater status meeting in Berlin
On July 18-19, 2019, the MedWater partners came together in Berlin to present the status of the individual work packages and to discuss the next steps. In addition to the German partners, several international collaborators attended the two-day workshop: Dr.…

MedWater at EGU 2019
We are pleased that at this year’s European Geophysical Union (EGU) the MedWater project was represented by two poster presentations. Both posters dealt with the numerical simulation of the Western Mountain Aquifer in Israel, taking different approaches: “Quantification of large-scale…
The Mediterranean Region – A Hotspot of Climate Change
The projected climatic changes will have a significant impact on the availability of food and water, energy consumption, human health, tourism, economics and ecosystem services in the Mediterranean region.