Digital Innovations

Water, energy, and food are the core of the programmes and strategies of developing countries where the interest in the WEF nexus approach is rapidly growing. However, a lack of empirical evidence, approaches, and tools for WEF nexus assessment has been highlighted. WEF-Tools aims at supporting the sustainable socio-economic development in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions by applying, in five case studies, an participatory approach that starts from conceptual mapping of the Water-Energy-Food nexus system to the development of quantitative tools such as the System Dynamics Models (SDMs), and the identification and computation of indicators for the assessment of different scenarios and management strategies, subsequently providing decision-makers with feasible development pathway options. WEF-Tools aims at supporting policymakers to make decisions which support environment, economy, and WEF developments at different levels. It also provides a means to assess progress towards Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, SDGs 2, 6, and 7.

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The main objective of the project is to enable DUPC2 projects and partner organisations to implement Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) and associated tools for storing, analysing and sharing various types of data generated, which would permit data and the extracted knowledge to be effectively used for informed decision making, dissemination of innovations and scientific research. The beneficiaries of the project are: government, researchers, students, civil society in the DUPC2 priority basins/regions.

Efficient use of water within the agricultural sector is of utmost importance as it is considered the largest consumer of water globally. In absence of sufficient observed data, remote sensing information is ideal to estimate the spatially distributed water consumption patterns of the agricultural sector and to identify areas where improvements can be made. The project Water Productivity Improvement in Practice (Water-PIP) aims to facilitate the increase in crop water productivity in DGIS partner countries in Africa and Near East and Northern Africa (NENA) region. The FAO Water Productivity through Open access Remotely sensed derived data (WaPOR), now has over 10 years of data which can be used to evaluate land and water productivity, irrigation performance assessment, diagnostic analyses, yield prediction and productivity gaps. The project also aims to connect IT business solutions to the WaPOR database to improve the analyses and provide more insight into the database for practical applications. It will also capture practical solutions and link agribusinesses to improve land and water productivity. The WaterPIP team developed standardized protocols and scripts for implementing the assessments, which are available open access here. 

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Over the years, the Water and Development Partnership Programme (phase 2) has supported the work of the IHE Delft Water Accounting team in developing the Water Accounting plus (WA+) framework and its associated tools. With increasing competition over water resources, there is a need for a consistent and transparent reporting of the distribution and use of water between sectors, countries and users to inform river basin planning. The Water Accounting Plus (WA+) framework was developed at IHE with funding from the Water and Development Partnership Programme (phase 2) to provide such information using various types of open access databases, including satellite remote sensing data. WA+ provides aggregated information at river basin level as well as in a spatially and temporally distributed manner, while making explicit the water use associated with different land use types.

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With evidence from recent studies that the region is witnessing the worst drought in several hundred years, water use management is a key concern for Lebanon and quantifications of water requirements is important to the agricultural sector of the country. Despite a plethora of water projects in Lebanon, water management in agriculture (the biggest water user) suffers from major problems, with a big gap existing between research and development projects and applications at the farm level.  The ultimate goal in this project is to map daily water use, daily vegetation indices, and eventually yield and water productivity in the context of a field-scale agricultural monitoring system for improved water management.  

Learn more by visiting the project website, or click here to view the storymap on Revolutionizing Smart Irrigation with AgSAT