PROJECTS

Current and past projects involving SoftWater members

SIRIC

A web platform for hydraulic risk analysis documents

Hydraulic department of Università degli Studi di Milano is supporting CAP multiutility to implement a repository of hydraulic risk analysis documents in the Milan Italian province.

SoftWater implemented a geo-database to store data coming from this repository, providing a web platform for data analysis which brings together webGIS functionalities, interactive user interfaces for database view creation and indicator processing engine, in order to allow multi-scale analysis of the repository.

RISORSE

Big data analytics for Waste Management

Cooperativa Risorse collects waste management in different locations of VCO and Novara italian provinces. They started to monitor vehicles position and wanted to get the most out of this movement data.

SoftWater implemented a Spatial Data Infrastructure to collect, process and store big data coming from the vehicles fleet and implemented a web platform to provide an interactive and effective analysis tool to Risorse managers and operators.

This platform got the financial support of local Commerce Chamber for innovation projects.

PROJECT O

Demonstration of planning and technology tools for a circular, integrated and symbiotic use of water

Project Ô intends to demonstrate approaches and technologies to drive an integrated and symbiotic use of water within a specific area, putting together the needs of different users and wastewater producers, involving regulators, service providers, civil society, industry and agriculture.

The project delivers:

innovative and flexible water treatment technologies and control systems,
decision making platforms, supporting regulators and water users,
an overall consultative and participatory approach to the decision making over the water management choices.

SoftWater members are currently developing a Decision Analytic Platform, aimed to support water systems authorities, regulators and water users on the to evaluate the overall effects of different strategies of water management and treatment.

IGRASP

Irrigation module on Geospatial natural Resources AnalyticS Platform

SoftWater developed a web platform to estimate the water balance at irrigation district scale and support for the efficient management of water distribution. IGRASP platform integrates a web Geographic Information System (webGIS), IDRAGRA, a distributed mathematical model that simulates the entire cycle of the wate, an time series database and a visual analytic dashboard to support irrigation district managers and enhance data-driven decision making.

This platform has been tested on some districts feeded by Oglio river.

SoftWater members developed a Python toolbox, to train, validate and use machine learning alghorithms for Sentinel2 multispectral images time series classification and analysis.

IRIS

Italian Research and development Initiative for Spaceborne river monitoring

IRIS aims at developing tools for monitoring medium-large river systems from remote sensing to support the implementation of the European Water Framework (WFD) and the European Floods Directive (FD).

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs, also called drones) and traditional field techniques (e.g. RTK-GPS) are used to survey local river features, e.g., topography, sediment size, vegetation, morphological habitats.

These data is then used as ground truth to test what can be detected at large scale from the recent Sentinel satellites from the Copernicus program The objective is to provide prototypal tools and guidelines for an integrate, multi-scale framework for monitoring medium-large river systems fusing most recent advances in remote sensing from satellites, to low-cost UASs and smart sensors.

SoftWater members developed a Python toolbox, to train, validate and use machine learning alghorithms for Sentinel2 multispectral images time series classification and analysis.

DAFNE

Use of a Decision-Analytic Framework to explore the water-energy-food NExus in complex and trans-boundary water resources systems of fast growing developing countries.

DAFNE advocates an integrated and adaptive water resources planning and management approach that explicitly addresses the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus from a novel participatory and multidisciplinary perspective.

A decision-analytic-framework (DAF) will be developed to quantitatively assess the social, economic, and environmental impact of expanding energy and food production. Results will be deployed in two pilot case studies in rapidly growing African regions, the Zambezi and the Omo Rivers basins.

SoftWater members are currently involved into several tasks, including: hydrological modelling, geoportal development, indicators identification.

SOWATCH

SOft path WATer management adaptation to CHanging climate

SO-WATCH aims at developing and testing a novel decision-analytic framework to assist decision-makers in designing and assessing alternative soft-path measures for improving the overall water productivity at the river basin scale.

SO-WATCH will combine distributed and participatory management, coordination mechanisms, low-cost and reversible infrastructural interventions, and smart economics to increase the flexibility of water management practices under current and projected hydro-climatic and socio-techno-economic conditions. The framework will be developed for the Lake Como river basin, Italy.

SoftWater members are currently involved into several tasks, including: irrigation modelling, soft-path design, distributed indicators identification.

IMRR

Integrated and sustainable water Management of Red-Thai Binh River system in a changing climate

The goal of the IMRR project is to improve water management practice in the Red-Thai Binh Rivers system with the purpose of meeting Vietnamese society’s long-term needs for water resources while maintaining essential ecological services and improving the economic benefits from hydropower production and agriculture.
Specifically, the project goals are: to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and environmental sustainability of water management in the basin through advanced modelling tools and supporting stakeholders dialogue, coordination and negotiations; to enhance capacity in water governance by favoring experience-sharing and the transfer of expertise, methodologies and tools to Viet Nam.

2012 - 2016
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Italy
Climate change, integrated modelling
xake.elet.polimi.it/imrr/
Awarded by RRI-tools
Video summary

SoftWater members supported the project management, developed the simulation and evaluation model of the system. They also supported all the negotiation rounds producing ad-hoc tools to facilitate the participation and improve the analysis

STRADA2.0

STRtegie di ADAttamento al cambiamento climatico 2.0 - Climate change adaptation strategies 2.0

Strada 2.0 project is a follow-up of the previous STRADA-Verbace Project, aimed to the realization of a online monitoring system of the effects of lake Maggiore and lake Lugano management.The project has been proposed by Canton Ticino (CH) and Regione Lombardia (I) and it will rely on the knowledge framework defined in the STRADA-Verbace project, which identified 20 sectors of interest and more than 100 indicators to assess the effects of several possible changes in the two lakes management strategies. The monitoring system will be built with open source technologies and it will give access, through a dynamic map of the system, to all the information related to indicators and physical variables all over the system.

SoftWater members developed entirely the monitoring system, engineering the tools identified in the VerbaCe project and integrating them with a data acquisition interface to automatically updated indicators and simulations as long as new data enter in the system.

VerbaCe

STRtegie di ADAttamento al cambiamento climatico 2.0 - Climate change adaptation strategies 2.0

The main objective of the project is to evaluate negotiated water regulation policies of the Verbano and Ceresio system, in order to improve the satisfaction of the stakeholders and the quality of the ecosystem. Various intervention actions were taken into consideration to identify shared policies for the regulation of the two lakes. These policies have been assessed both against the historical statistical distribution of inflows and possible inflow scenarios resulting from climate change. The evaluations of these interventions were considered: the effects induced in the riverside municipalities of the two lakes, both Swiss and Italian; other effects induced on the Ticino emissary, in particular on the values of the flows of lean and full; the application of the minimum vital outflow; the possible effects on aquatic ecosystems dependent on water regulation.

4c

The quarry lakes as regulators of water emergencies

The availability of water volumes in quarry lakes suggests its use as a synergistic tool for the sustainable management of water resources. Project 4c aims to collect available volumes, to analyze and to define a protocol for their use in the province of Cremona.

MERIT

Management of the Environment and Resources using Integrated Techniques

The aim of the project is to develop a practical and effective methodology for supporting water managers in multiobjective decision-making while ensuring active involving of the stakeholders. To this end, an integrated management tool is developed, based on the concept of Bayesian Belief Networks.

HARMONI-CA

Harmonised Modelling Tools for Integrated Basin Management

Harmoni-CA is a large-scale concerted action aimed at synthesising available knowledge on integrated water resource management with the purpose of providing guidance to the development of River Basin Management Plans required by the EU-WFD.

TWOLE

TwoLe: A system for water resources management

The aim of the project is to develop a Multi-Objective Decision Support System (MODSS) for planning and management of water resources at the basin scale. The MODSS, called TwoLe, is constituted by a platform of computing tools that support the decision-making process both at the planning and management level. TwoLe is tested on two pilot project applications:

TwoLe/A: Real-time management of lake Verbano
TwoLe/B: Policy design for lake Como

SEBINO

Optimal regulation of Lake Iseo

The major issues to be taken into consideration are flood control for the lake Iseo and its effluent river, hydropower production, water supply for irrigation and environmental quality. Multiobjective optimization techniques are used to compute efficient management policies under different options of two planning interventions: the introduction of a minimum environmental flow constraint on the lake release and the modification of the lake’s regulation range.

VERBANO

Negotiation between Italy and Switzerland for the management of Lake Maggiore

The aim of the project is to define and apply a methodology for facing the conflict on the use of the waters of Lake Verbano. Multi-objective optimization techniques are used to design efficient alternatives that combine structural modification of the lake outlet, changes in the legal constraints (minimum environmental flow and regulation range) and modification of the regulation policy. The effects produced by the efficient alternatives are estimated via simulation and measured by means of an ample set of indicators.

TONO

Optimal operation of a SWS reservoir system

The project adopt a novel approach based on the conjunctive use of a batch-mode Reinforcement Learning algorithm and a one-dimensional (1D) coupled hydrodynamic-ecological model to design the optimal operation of a multipurpose water reservoir accounting for both quantity and quality targets.

PREMADIO

Cost estimation of failed hydropower production in 2008-2009

The aim of the project is to estimate the damage of A2A in the period 2008-2009 caused of a defective production unit installed in the Premadio power station.

CERESIO

Optimal regulation of Lago Ceresio

The aim of the project is to identificate optimal policies for regulation of Ponte Tresa dam with the use of an Integrated and Participated Planning procedure.