Integrated Water Resources Management

PureCircles brings together scientific partners and societal stakeholders from seven Mediterranean countries to increase water availability and quality by integrating water technology with agro-technical facilities and management strategies.

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News & Events

23/07/08
Project Presentation at the University of Hohenheim open day
23/07/10 - 23/07/12
Kick-off meeting at AlgoSur in Seville (Spain)
23/11/30
Project presentation to DAAD COSIMENA in Cairo

Goals

The PureCircles consortium has the following main objectives:

Establish, test and validate the technical components of a recirculating system for integrated water and resources management IWRM system in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Portugal and Spain.
Maximize crop yield and resource efficiency (energy, water and nutrients) by complementing the hydroponic water rehabilitation system with customized water management plans for field crops in all study sites.
Reducing water demand, optimizing salinity balance, and limiting sediment and pollutants in runoff water.
AI-assisted irrigation and fertilization management tool.
Installation and testing of agrophotovoltaics (e.g., flexible PV for greenhouses, agrovoltaics in fields) to evaluate their impact on crop yields and operational efficiency, and evaluation of the potential for dual-use PV panels to generate energy and captured rainwater (for groundwater recharge, salt leaching from soil, and irrigation) at study sites.
Develop and test an AI-based decision and management tool that integrates the main components of the circular IWRM system with smart agriculture.

Concept

Work Packages

WP1 – AI assisted Management: Provision and implementation of an intelligent control concept and approaches for the Living Labs.
WP2 – Agrivoltaics & Energy Management: Develop and implement concepts for hybrid energy supply systems agrivoltaics/ wind for field crops and greenhouses.
WP3 – Hydroponic water purification & greenhouses: Implementation of hydroponic water purification concepts with innovative measures and tools.
WP4 – Living Labs: Characterization and evaluation of systemic solutions along the water-energy-nutrient nexus comparatively at the study sites characterized by saline soils and scarce water resources.
WP5 – Modelling Water Catchment Effects: Analyze and model the broader impacts of innovations implemented at the watershed scale.
WP6 – Socioeconomy & Sustainability Assessment: Concrete and comparative socio-economic assessment of the study sites.
WP7 – Marketing, Outreach and Exploitation: Maximization of impact and dissemination of project results.
WP8 – Coordination

Living Labs

The Living Lab approach will demonstrate the performance, effectiveness and benefits of the PureCircles approach. The project will further develop tools and combinations of measures in five study sites (Morocco, Egypt, Portugal, Spain and Tunisia) to address the diversity of regional conditions in the Mediterranean in terms of soil systems, water quality and quantity.