IT-WATER: the future of water resources in Italy

The IT-WATER project has officially started, an initiative funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) aimed at producing detailed drought scenarios in Italy through high-performance computing technologies. Thanks to the collaboration between CIMA Research Foundation, FadeOut Software , and Agenzia ItaliaMeteo , the project aims to tackle the challenges of climate change to support the sustainability of water resources on a national scale.

The (in)visible crisis of water resources

What happens when water, a fundamental resource for life, begins to run scarce? In Italy, this is increasingly becoming a concrete reality. Events such as the severe drought affecting Sicily and the water scarcity in the central-northern regions over the past two years are alarming signals that urge us to reconsider our relationship with water. Today, we are facing a water crisis that not only represents an economic damage due to its effects on agriculture and industry but also begins to impact the daily life of each of us, putting health and food security at risk.?

In this context, the IT-WATER project begins, financed by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) and led by CIMA Research Foundation in collaboration with FadeOut Software and Agenzia ItaliaMeteo . IT-WATER aims to improve the understanding of water resources in Italy by creating the first high-resolution national scenarios on the evolution of drought for the country. By involving entities with complementary expertise, ranging from geoscientific knowledge to computational skills, IT-WATER is positioned not only as a research project aimed at understanding the ongoing changes but also as an attempt to provide practical tools for the country's resilience to drought hazards.

Understanding change?

How will water resources in Italy evolve in a climate change scenario? While national adaptation plans to climate change and climate scenarios such as those produced by the CMCC Foundation - Centro Euro Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici exist, there is a lack of specific, spatially distributed, and unique forecasts at the national level that extend such scenarios to the water cycle, particularly the drought hazard.?

"IT-WATER was created to fill this scientific gap and provide a unique national framework on the future of water resources and the drought hazard," explains our researcher Francesco Avanzi , project lead, who highlights how the ongoing drought in Italy over the last three years has revealed the urgency of better understanding how droughts will evolve in the future.?

An Italian map of future droughts?

IT-WATER aims to calculate a high-resolution scenario integrating climate change and water availability on a national level.?

"Water does not follow our administrative boundaries," observes Avanzi, "and water availability crosses regional and national borders. In conditions of abundant water, we don't perceive this reality much, but in drought situations, it becomes evident how our water supply spans different institutional levels, each with its own responsibilities. This is where the idea of studying the future drought hazard for the entire country originates."?

This unified vision is important in the Italian context, which is particularly vulnerable to drought, exacerbated by climatic and geographical factors: "The country, with its typically Mediterranean climate, experiences extremely dry summer periods, precisely when water demand is at its highest. In the north, rising temperatures threaten the stability of mountain water reserves, with the reduction of glaciers and snowfall, while in the south, where summers are getting hotter, evapotranspiration further pressures water availability. With IT-WATER, these dynamics will be mapped at a national scale to provide useful data for informing mitigation and adaptation strategies in the Italian context," continues the researcher.

What about the technological infrastructure and High-Performance Computing (HPC)? What are the project's challenges and expected legacy?

Read on in the in-depth discussion on our website.