March 24, 2015:
Integrated Water Resource Management in semi-arid regions - the ATB is participating in Phase 2 of the BMBF - funded project IWRM in Iran.
With a kick-off meeting on the 24th of March 2015 in Berlin, the joint project "Integrated Water Resource Management ( IWRM ) Zayandeh Rud" started a second phase. The ATB along with the TU Berlin, the abc advanced biomass concepts GmbH and the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA) strengthens the previous team as new partners.
Contact at ATB: Judy Libra
The focus of the project is on the expansion and implementation of the IWRM concept that has been under development since 2010 in Phase I and knowledge transfer. Under the direction of inter 3 Institute for Resource Management, scientists and companies will be working until 2018 on developing political-legal and technological measures to improve resource utilization in the sectors of agriculture, industry and urban water management, creating training modules and building a German-Iranian water competence center. A central element of the project is the development and implementation of a water management tool (WMT) to support decision-makers in establishing concrete goals and creating action plans for sustainable resource management for the entire water catchment basin. With the WMT, the impact of potential actions can be estimated.
The ATB is participating with its scientific expertise in three of the six modules (A, C, D).
In Module A, the WMT is to be developed further, supplemented by decision-relevant information and a decision support system (DSS). ATB´s task is to expand and develop the system of calculating the irrigation needs in the catchment basin as well as add a component to calculate the additional irrigation need due to increasing salt concentrations.
In Module C, the ATB is mainly responsible for the development of concrete measures to promote the agricultural transformation process, and for the assessment of these measures in terms of their effects on water productivity in the catchment basin. The work builds on the "AgroHyd Farmmodel" developed at ATB. Promising combinations of land use strategies will be identified at the local level and integrated into the WMT for the entire water system.
In Module D "Implementation of appropriate methods and technologies', the ATB is modeling the water balance and groundwater recharge in a pilot project for innovative irrigation technology. The further development of the "AgroHyd Farmmodel" in the project supports ATB in creating a technical-viable product for the modeling of water productivity in agricultural production systems. Furthermore, the irrigation module developed in the project for the basin-wide estimation of irrigation water use can be linked to more extensive regional water modeling.
Background: Iran is facing enormous challenges with its limited water resources. Solutions are urgently needed for its threatened water bodies. The Zayandeh Rud as the most important river of central Iran is of special importance. It supplies some 4.5 million people with water in the region of Isfahan, which is among the most important industrial and agricultural production centers in the country. In recent years, the river has repeatedly dried up before reaching the city. This is due to climatic changes and the increased demand for water. Around 85 percent of the withdrawn water resources are required for agricultural irrigation.
The research project "Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Zayandeh Rud" is funded by the BMBF as part of the funding measure "Integrated Water Resource Management including the necessary technology and know-how transfer". In Iran, the federal Department of Energy supports the project, which has designated the Isfahan Water Authority as the Iranian partners.
Information: www.iwrm-isfahan.com