WADI - Water supply watershed planning and management: an integrated approach

The objective of the project WADI was the development of a decision support system: tools and methodologies that can be used to assist decision making in watershed management boards and water planning authorities having to determine where to locate new dams/reservoirs. The tools and methodologies addressed the various elements related to reservoir identification (geographic location, water volume, infrastructure cost) given the watershed characteristics (water demand requirements, water resources, MNT, etc.) in an integrated manner that considers socio-economic issues as well as environmental aspects related to flood and drought risks. In addition, WADI developed advanced data processing tools for modelling and simulation related to floods, reservoir design, and optimisation of the complete planned network of a watershed. Field applications were performed on pilot basins in Morocco (Foum Tillicht) and Lebanon (Nahr Beyrouth) for the localization of potential dam sites and the prevision of natural inundation in addition to Oued Soummam (Algeria).