An Integrated Approach to Drought Mitigation in Mediterranean Regions

Severe recent droughts that occurred in Mediterranean countries have shown that a proactive approach based on drought management plans to identify and implement adequate measures for coping with droughts is necessary. The EC INCO-DC project DSS-DROUGHT, developed by five organisations from Italy, Portugal, Tunisia, Jordan and Syria aimed at developing an appropriate Decision Support System able to cope with drought and in particular to improve the management of irrigation systems under drought conditions. The paper presents the main features of the integrated approach to drought mitigation developed within the project through different tasks, namely hydrological drought identification and monitoring, irrigation scheduling strategies, and water supply operation rules. The related software modules of the Decision Support System package resulted very useful tools for analysing droughts and developing appropriate mitigation measures. Also the requisites of a Drought Watch System defined in the project set the criteria for implementing early drought warning in Mediterranean regions.

[1]  Evan Vlachos,et al.  Coping with droughts , 1983 .

[2]  G. Munda.  Multicriteria Evaluation in a Fuzzy Environment: Theory and Applications in Ecological Economics , 1995 .

[3]  Donald A. Wilhite,et al.  Drought : a global assessment , 2000 .

[4]  Luis S. Pereira,et al.  Irrigation Scheduling Simulation: The Model Isareg , 2003 .

[5]  F. Lebdi,et al.  Optimisation of Reservoir Management in Semi-Arid Countries: Case of Lakhmess, Tunisia , 2003 .

[6]  Marcello Benedini,et al.  On regional drought estimation and analysis , 1992 .

[7]  Antonino Cancelliere,et al.  At-Site and Regional Drought Identification by Redim Model , 2003 .

[8]  L. S. Pereira,et al.  Irrigation Scheduling Simulation for Citrus in Sicily to Cope with Water Scarcity , 2003 .

[9]  Alessandro Ancarani,et al.  A Neural Networks Approach for Deriving Irrigation Reservoir Operating Rules , 2002 .

[10]  Luis S. Pereira,et al.  Analysis of Local and Regional Droughts in Southern Portugal using the Theory of Runs and the Standardised Precipitation Index , 2003 .

[11]  Andrew Albert Dzurik,et al.  Water Resources Planning , 1990 .

[12]  M. Shatanawi,et al.  Irrigation Management Dynamics in the Jordan Valley under Drought Conditions , 2003 .

[13]  Giuseppe Rossi,et al.  Drought Mitigation Measures: A Comprehensive Framework , 2000 .

[14]  Luis S. Pereira,et al.  Simulation of Supplemental Irrigation Strategies for Wheat in Near East to Cope with Water Scarcity , 2003 .

[15]  Requisites for a Drought Watch System , 2003 .

[16]  Luis S. Pereira,et al.  COPING WITH DROUGHT: DEFICIT IRRIGATION STRATEGIES FOR CEREALS AND FIELD HORTICULTURAL CROPS IN CENTRAL TUNISIA , 2003 .

[17]  L. Mays.  Water Resources Handbook , 1996 .

[18]  Antonino Cancelliere,et al.  DROUGHTS IN SICILY AND COMPARISON OF IDENTIFIED DROUGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN REGIONS , 2003 .

[19]  Ralph A. Wurbs,et al.  Water Management Models: A Guide to Software , 1995 .

[20]  L. S. Pereira,et al.  Feasibility of Deficit Irrigation with Center-Pivot to Cope with Limited Water Supplies in Alentejo, Portugal , 2003 .

[21]  Alessandro Ancarani,et al.  Derivation of Operation Rules for an Irrigation Water Supply System by Multiple Linear Regression and Neural Networks , 2003 .

[22]  Jean Andrews.  A+ Guide to Software , 2002 .

[23]  Jürgen Vogt,et al.  Drought and drought mitigation in Europe , 2000 .

[24]  Giuseppe Munda,et al.  Multicriteria Evaluation in a Fuzzy Environment , 1995 .