ICT tools for enhancing sustainable water management in rural environments

Numerical models are relevant tools to achieve the proper application of the Water Framework Directive (WFD, EU 2000). Their major advantage is to foster a full characterization of the involved flow terms and contaminant transport pathways. Thanks to their predictive function, numerical models can help also to address planning and management activities. Many hydrological codes developed so far have faced the problem of tackling multiscale territorial planning (e.g., Bergez et al. 2012). We introduce here the GIS-integrated FREEWAT platform aimed at providing a unique modeling environment to simulate multiple hydrological processes, with a focus on the sustainable management of conjunctive use of surface- and ground-water resources in rural environments. FREEWAT (FREE and open source software tools for WATer resource management; Rossetto et al., 2015) is an EU HORIZON 2020 project, whose main goal is to simplify the application of EU water-related Directives. It aims at integrating a simulation platform in a Geographic Information System (GIS), coupling the power of GIS geo-processing and post-processing tools in spatial data analysis to that of simulation codes. The FREEWAT platform is being developed within the QGIS free open source software package and fosters the simulation of the whole hydrological cycle using open source numerical codes mainly belonging to the USGS MODFLOW family.