WEAM4i project kick-off meeting: Water & Energy Advanced Management for Irrigation

Last 3-4 December 2013, Meteosim & Adasa Sistemas organized the kick-off meeting of the new launched project: WEAM4i ‘Water & Energy Advanced Management for Irrigation’. This meeting was hosted in the premises of Meteosim in Barcelona with the participation of the whole project partners: METEOSIM SL, HISPATEC, FENACORE, IVIA, ADASA, INERGIA GRUPO, COMUNIDAD GENERAL DE REGANTES DEL CANAL DE BARDENAS (Spain), Aquagri ACE, FENAREG (Portugal), WATERWATCH, HR (Netherlands), LWK Niedersachsen, LGRain GmbH, ECLAREON, Ingenieurbüro Schulz, ZIM (Germany) & EMWIS/SEMIDE (France). KURT SALMON facilitated the debates during the meeting.

WEAM4i project is co-funded within ENV-2013-WATER-INNO-DEMO-1 (Challenge 6.3: Improving resource efficiency) with a contribution of 5,1 M Euros over 42 months, and started officially on November 1^st, 2013.

The WEAM4i project is based on two innovative management concepts:

A water & energy smart grid for irrigation: allowing interactive energy use decisions, by introducing demand-side management and matching the consumption to the available energy offer, due to existing water storage capability (in reservoirs or in the soil) that enables an ”near-almost elastic” demand.
An innovative, cloud based, integration approach: an ICT platform based on a Service Oriented Architecture, for hosting the DSS applications, while, at field level, the existing local irrigation systems will remain.

Agriculture sector is accountable for 30% of the total water consumption in Europe, but reaches up to 70% of total water consumption in several European southern countries. In recent years, most of the efforts have been focused on water efficiency, without taking care of energy aspects, resulting in some cases on a significant increase in energy consumption, both per irrigated surface and per volume unit of water. The WEAM4i project will mainly address 2 of the priorities of the EIP on Water: “Water-Energy nexus” and “Decision support systems (DSS) and monitoring”.

Techniques for resource efficiency at local level will be demonstrated on the irrigation systems aforementioned: for saving water, for improving the m3/kwh ratio and for the minimization of the operational cost of water supply infrastructures. Full-scale demonstration activities will be performed in 3 EU countries (PT, ES and DE), covering a wide range of landscapes and crop types, from southern to central EU. Companies and SMEs will benefit from the future commercialization of the outcomes while the users will reduce the operational costs of their irrigation systems. To Sum up: once important water savings have been achieved, the new challenge for the irrigation sector is to minimize the energy costs. The WEAM4i project aims to provide innovative solutions for this challenge.

The meeting was a good occasion to discuss the timelines of the whole project WPs and the way the partners will work together to produce the deliverables of the project during the first six months, and how it will be coordinated. It was decided that Meteosim will take in charge the administrative coordination of the project, and ADASA the technical coordination. An intranet has been set up by ADASA prior to the meeting to facilitate the exchanges between WEAM4i partners, while a project website will be launched by next April.

WEAM4i project coordinators will attend the next common Kick-off for Water-Inno-Demo Call projects to be held in Brussels next January 24^th, 2014.

For additional information on this project, please contact the project coordinators.

Armando Javier Palomar
WEAM4i Administrative Coordinator
Meteosim SL
Barcelona Science Park: Baldiri Reixac 10-12
08028 Barcelona, Spain
+34 699 78 06 28
ajpalomar@meteosim.com
www.meteosim.com

Sergio de Campos

WEAM4i Technical Coordinator
ADASA Sistemas
C/José Agustín de Goytisolo, 30-32

08908 Hospitalet del Llobregat, Spain

+34 932 640 602

sdecampos@adasasistemas.com
www.adasasistemas.com

Jauad El Kharraz
WEAM4i Dissemination Coordinator

EMWIS/SEMIDE
EMWIS T.U. BP23

06901 Sophia Antipolis, France
+33 492 94 22 93

jauad.el-kharraz@semide.org
www.emwis.net

Contact information	Armando Javier Palomar WEAM4i Administrative Coordinator Meteosim SL Barcelona Science Park: Baldiri Reixac 10-12 08028 Barcelona, Spain // Sergio de Campos WEAM4i Technical Coordinator ADASA Sistemas C/José Agustín de Goytisolo, 30-32 08908 Hospitalet del Llobregat, Spain // Jauad El Kharraz WEAM4i Dissemination Coordinator EMWIS/SEMIDE EMWIS T.U. BP23 06901 Sophia Antipolis, France (email: ajpalomar@meteosim.com ; sdecampos@adasasistemas.com ; jauad.el-kharraz@semide.org ) Phone: +34 699 78 06 28 / +34 932 640 602 / +33 492 94 22 93
News type	Inbrief
File link	n/a
File link local	20161206_WEAM4i_press-release.doc (DOC, 151 Kb)
Source of information	EMWIS Technical Unit
Keyword(s)	Water-Energy nexus, irrigation, DSS, ICT, use efficiency
Subject(s)	AGRICULTURE , ANALYSIS AND TESTS , ENERGY , FINANCE-ECONOMY , HYDRAULICS - HYDROLOGY , INFORMATION - COMPUTER SCIENCES , INFRASTRUCTURES , MEASUREMENTS AND INSTRUMENTATION , METHTODOLOGY - STATISTICS - DECISION AID , NATURAL MEDIUM , POLICY-WATER POLICY AND WATER MANAGEMENT , RISKS AND CLIMATOLOGY , TOOL TERMS , WATER DEMAND
Relation	http://www.emwis.net/thematicdirs/events/2013/12/weam4i-kick-meeting-water-energy-advanced-management-irrigation
Geographical coverage	Spain,Portugal,France,Netherlands,Germany,
News date	06/12/2013
Working language(s)	ENGLISH

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