Issues
Areas
Solutions
TRL Level
SRL Level
FREEWAT platform helps in increasing resilience to water related hazards, in particular drought, by enhancing groundwater management and supporting analysis at contaminated sites. It helps increasing resilience of territories to drought and water scarcity and planning innovative blue infrastructures for water-related agroecosystem services. We aim at increasing capacities at public administration level and private companies, by performing alphabetization in digital tools for water management.
Developed by Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (in collaboration with other institutions)
The FREEWAT platform is a free and open source QGIS integrated platform for groundwater management. It integrates tools for time series processing and water quality data management, as well as a number of well documented and tested simulation codes, mostly from USGS MODFLOW family. FREEWAT is the result of the H2020 FREEWAT project ending sept 30th 2017 (www.freewat.eu) During the project, aside from the sw platform, more than ten well-documented tutorials, datasets and manuals were produced.
See more information about this level and the TRL and SRL levels.
FREEWAT aims at serving as pre- and post-processor for processing of hydrological time-series to maximize sensor gathered information (baseflow extraction, resampling, etc.), water quality data, solving groundwater flow, contaminant transport in saturated and unsaturated condition, calibration of numerical models, optimization of water supply systems, management of water for agricultural purposes. FREEWAT helps in building shared awareness on the value of water. It may be used by public authorities for the implementation of river basin management plans using the participatory approach (as done in 14 case studies in the project) – or by companies for providing readily usable models on contaminated sites to agencies, instead of only reports.
Limitations/conditions under which this innovation does not work or is less effective
FREEWAT has been tested successfully on up to 16 different case studies so far, in different regions of Europe and in Africa. Its application to a large number of case studies will greatly improve demonstration of its reliability for drought management in different conditions. To this, its application to long-term temporal scale is needed (such as several years or decades). Even if no theoretical barrier exists for its application on these situations, an optimization of the code to cope with these stressed conditions should be developed and assessed.
Added value
FREEWAT has a series of advantages compared to existing ICT tools for water management. Below the list of key advantages leading to its unique position: – Free and open source: FREEWAT is free so that no license fees are needed and it is open source, anyone can have access to the code and evaluate its reliability; – Portability: work created in FREEWAT (i.e. models and GIS projects) can be shared with any party interested (client, public authorities, colleagues). All data used and projects saved can be shared with any interested stakeholder, thus increasing the reliability of complex analysis. – Integration: input and output data or hydrological/hydrogeological analysis/models are inherently geo-localized. Being integrated in a powerful GIS software allows maximizing the time to perform analysis and in the meantime to produce high quality and accurate simulations of groundwater management issues.
FREEWAT platform helps in increasing resilience to water related hazards, in particular drought, by enhancing groundwater management and supporting analysis at contaminated sites. It helps increasing resilience of territories to drought and water scarcity and planning innovative blue infrastructures for water-related agroecosystem services. We aim at increasing capacities at public administration level and private companies, by performing alphabetization in digital tools for water management.
Developed by Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (in collaboration with other institutions)
The FREEWAT platform is a free and open source QGIS integrated platform for groundwater management. It integrates tools for time series processing and water quality data management, as well as a number of well documented and tested simulation codes, mostly from USGS MODFLOW family. FREEWAT is the result of the H2020 FREEWAT project ending sept 30th 2017 (www.freewat.eu) During the project, aside from the sw platform, more than ten well-documented tutorials, datasets and manuals were produced.
The main components of the system have been tested separately, and an initial integration exercise has been conducted.
FREEWAT aims at serving as pre- and post-processor for processing of hydrological time-series to maximize sensor gathered information (baseflow extraction, resampling, etc.), water quality data, solving groundwater flow, contaminant transport in saturated and unsaturated condition, calibration of numerical models, optimization of water supply systems, management of water for agricultural purposes. FREEWAT helps in building shared awareness on the value of water. It may be used by public authorities for the implementation of river basin management plans using the participatory approach (as done in 14 case studies in the project) – or by companies for providing readily usable models on contaminated sites to agencies, instead of only reports.
Limitations/conditions under which this innovation does not work or is less effective
FREEWAT has been tested successfully on up to 16 different case studies so far, in different regions of Europe and in Africa. Its application to a large number of case studies will greatly improve demonstration of its reliability for drought management in different conditions. To this, its application to long-term temporal scale is needed (such as several years or decades). Even if no theoretical barrier exists for its application on these situations, an optimization of the code to cope with these stressed conditions should be developed and assessed.
Added value
FREEWAT has a series of advantages compared to existing ICT tools for water management. Below the list of key advantages leading to its unique position: – Free and open source: FREEWAT is free so that no license fees are needed and it is open source, anyone can have access to the code and evaluate its reliability; – Portability: work created in FREEWAT (i.e. models and GIS projects) can be shared with any party interested (client, public authorities, colleagues). All data used and projects saved can be shared with any interested stakeholder, thus increasing the reliability of complex analysis. – Integration: input and output data or hydrological/hydrogeological analysis/models are inherently geo-localized. Being integrated in a powerful GIS software allows maximizing the time to perform analysis and in the meantime to produce high quality and accurate simulations of groundwater management issues.
Not a member yet?
No worries, you can register here.
Name field No Space Allowed.
Already a member? login here
Not a member yet?
No worries, you can register here.
Enter some personal details
and you’re good to go!
You know what they say, sharing is caring! You can share this innovation with as many people you feel will be interested in it.
Tip: include a message about why it caught your eye.
Did something peak your interest? You can share any questions, praises, comments, or concerns and the company will recieve them directly. No need for middle-men here.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
