=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper64
|storemode=property
|title=Water Data Sharing in Italy with SIGRIAN WebGIS Platform
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper64.pdf
|volume=Vol-2030
|authors=Raffaella Zucaro,Gianfranco Giannerini,Marco Martello,Antonio Gerardo Pepe,Fabrizio Luigi Tascone
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/ZucaroGMPT17
}}
==Water Data Sharing in Italy with SIGRIAN WebGIS Platform==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper64.pdf
Water data sharing in Italy with SIGRIAN WebGIS
platform
Raffaella Zucaro1, Gianfranco Giannerini1, Antonio Gerardo Pepe1, Fabrizio Luigi
Tascone1, Marco Martello1
1
CREA Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Research Centre for Agricultural
Policies and Bioeconomy, Italy, e-mail: sigrian@crea.gov.it
Abstract. SIGRIAN (National Information System for Agriculture Water
Management) is a web GIS platform developed and managed by the Council
for Agricultural Research and Economics, Centre for Politics and Bio
economics (CREA-PB). This GEOdatabase is operating since 1998 and
recently it has been established by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture
(MIPAAF) as the reference repository for the irrigation data collection at
national scale. SIGRIAN collects both geographical information concerning
the hydraulic network schemes of the national water boards (Consortia and
Water Associations) and information technically and economically related to
the management of water resources in agriculture. SIGRIAN will be used as
database for economic evaluations to address policy related to water resources
in agriculture and to support the assessment of optimal water resource
allocation.
Keywords: Irrigation, Water policy, Water Framework Directive (WFD),
Rural Development Program (RDP), Web GIS, Geodatabase
1 Introduction
“We commit to approaches that improve sustainability of water use in food and
agricultural production while ensuring food security and nutrition in accordance with
our multilateral trade commitments”. This obligation is taken from G20Agriculture
Ministers’ Action Plan 2017 entitled Towards food and water security: fostering
sustainability, advancing innovation [2] and it shows the pressure on water
Governance and water-related policies ensuring the sustainable use and management
of water. The total irrigable area in EU-28 is circa 18.7 million ha, with 10.2 million
ha actually irrigated and the amount of water used for irrigation estimated around 40
billion cubic meters. The highest volume of water used for irrigation in absolute
terms was in Spain, where 16.7 billion m³ is used, followed by Italy with 11.6 billion
m³ (Eurostat1). In these two Mediterranean countries the economic sustainability of
1
Eurostat 2016 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Agri-
environmental_indicator_-_irrigation
513
farms is strongly dependent on irrigation, due to the scarce rainfalls and its uneven
distribution across the year [2]. Water is critical for economy, food security,
environment, and well-being of citizens. At the same time, water scarcity, pollution
of fresh water sources, and the effects of more frequent and intense floods and
droughts can have severe societal and economic impacts. To prevent these risks,
investment and innovative solutions are essential. In this context IT solutions play a
crucial role in providing support for the optimal water allocation and water saving;
they can also drive the water policies providing the rulers with the impact
assessment. The assessment of policy options provides the water authorities with
socio-economic and environmental analysis impacts for all options.
The 2000 Water Framework Directive (WFD) [3] and other water-related
directives have contributed to improving water protection in the EU. WFD is widely
accepted as the most substantial and ambitious piece of European environmental
legislation to date. The purpose of the Directive was to establish a framework for the
protection of European waters in order for Member States to reach “good status”
objectives for water bodies throughout the EU. Pollution from urban, industrial and
agricultural sources is subject to regulation. The implementation of WFD relies on
Member States taking a range of cost-effective measures (PoMs) in a transparent and
participatory way: the identification of management action (the distance between
current and desired water body state) and the process used to monitor the
effectiveness of PoMs (measures applied to reduce this distance) require a large
amount of information.
Concerning the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD)
some ex-ante conditionalities (EACs) are set out in the Fund specific rules and reflect
existing commitments or obligations that should be fulfilled as a general rule by
programme adoption. In case applicable ex-ante conditionalities are not fulfilled
(either completely or partially not-fulfilled), Member States need to indicate in their
Programmes and Partnership Agreement the actions to be taken, the responsible
bodies and a timetable to ensure their fulfillment. If the Commission concludes that
the applicable EACs have not been fulfilled, then EACs dependent payments may be
suspended. Compliance with EAC 5.2, on water pricing and cost recovery in the
agriculture sector (implementation of WFD article 9) applies to investments in
irrigation under Priority area 5 A (water efficiency).
In the context outlined above a robust monitoring infrastructure is crucial to
manage the requirements and commitments set up by the EU water policies.
SIGRIAN is at the heart of this data network.
The effective management of water is becoming more and more important as the
world supply of clean, fresh water is steadily decreasing. United Nations [4] and
European Commission [5] recognize ICT as an important enabler to improve the
management of the valuable natural resource.
2 SIGRIAN information content
SIGRIAN (Fig. 1) is the reference database for the irrigation sector identified by the
Italian Ministry of Agriculture. It is a Geographic Information System managed by
514
the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Research Centre for
Agricultural Policies and Bioeconomy (CREA-PB) and realized in collaboration with
the National Water Boards and the Regions. It contains geographic and alphanumeric
spatial data concerning irrigation features in collective irrigation areas (Irrigation and
Land Reclamation Consortia, Consortia for land improvement, Irrigation associations
etc.), such as:
• Administrative boundaries
• Irrigated and irrigable areas
• Irrigation supply
• Irrigation networks
• Hydrographic network
• Crop type
• Climatic characteristics
Fig. 1. SIGRIAN WebGIS home page
SIGRIAN is a repository and a catalogue, which ensures integrity of data and
information acquired and produced by the Italian irrigation sector. It allows the data
exchange and sharing with appropriate users, including download of data reports and
information for different user groups. It provides facts and figures about the
Irrigation infrastructure compiled from a variety of authoritative sources, it provides
information, diagrams and other pertinent information on hydraulic networks,
irrigation schemes, reservoirs and gauges.
Environmental Information Systems (EIS), are understood as an organized set of
resources (staff, data, procedures, hardware, software,...) for collecting, storing,
processing data and for delivering information, knowledge, and digital products. In
the context of water resources management, these information systems are sometimes
also called hydrological information systems (HIS) [6, 7, 8]. Within this category
515
SIGRIAN is a water information system (WIS), which integrates many sources of
information related with irrigation water resources:
• Irrigation projects funded by the National Irrigation Infrastructure Plan
• Meteorological data from the National Agrometeorological Network
(RAN)
• Data on natural disasters and related damage of municipal and provincial
details coming from official acts of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture
(MIPAAF)
• Crops and related irrigation volumes calculated with hydrological models
such as Irriframe developed by ANBI [9]
• Estimated irrigation needs in areas covered by the FATIMA-SIRIUS2
model based on satellite information [10]
• Irrigation volume withdrawn, used and returned both for collective
irrigation and for self-provided irrigation (i.e wells)
• Agronomic information from CAP payments applications (crops, fields
size, irrigation etc..)
Many WIS are available in European countries and all over the world. The Water
Information System for Europe called WISE3 collects information on European water
issues and it comprises a wide range of data and information gathered by EU
institutions to serve several stakeholders. The WISE-WFD database contains data
from River Basin Management Plans reported by EU Members States according to
article 13 of the Water Framework Directive. WISE also provides guidelines and
datasets for the water quantity and quality reporting from countries as part of
implementation of EU directives. SIGRIAN is compliant with the EU WISE datasets.
AQUASTAT is FAO's global water information system, developed by the Land
and Water Division4. It is the most quoted source on global water statistics. It
collects, analyze and disseminate data and information by country on water
resources, water uses, and agricultural water management.
The California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS)5, developed
in 1982 by DWR and the University of California, manages a network of over 145
automated weather stations in California and was designed to assist irrigators in
managing their water resources more efficiently.
Orange–Senqu water information System (wiS)6 [11] promotes the equitable and
sustainable development of the resources of the Orange-Senqu River (Botswana,
Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa) and supports data and information sharing
between the ORASECOM riparian States.
In comparison with other platforms SIGRIAN has its strong point in managing
both strategic information about the irrigation networks (like WISE or
ACQUASTAT) and operational seasonal data concerning water volumes, flows and
water usage (like wiS or CIMIS).
2
FATIMA project: http://fatima-h2020.eu/
3
WISE: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/wise_wfd
4
ACQUASTAT FAO: http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/main/index.stm
5
CMIS: http://www.cimis.water.ca.gov/
6
wiS: http://wis.orasecom.org/
516
3 Users and platform usage
SIGRIAN is fully web-based and the different stakeholders are able to edit and
update the information operating online. It has been developed using open source
software: PHP as programming language, PostgreSQL as GeoDB and Map Server as
cartographic engine and it is hosted on a Windows server.
SIGRIAN is not a platform open to the public because most of the information has
a strategic significance and includes financial aspects. The registered users are about
350 which are part of the decision makers and planners of the national irrigation
sector:
• Ministry of agriculture MIPAAF
• Ministry of environment MATTM
• Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport MIT
• Regional administration
• Water management boards: Consortia and Irrigation associations
• River basin authorities
In the user group both the final users of the water resource like the water
management boards of the agricultural sector and the authorities in charge of ruling
and planning the resource allocation at regional and basin level together with the
policies makers (Ministries) are represented. Data elaborations are provided on
demand to other public bodies, universities and research centers.
In 2016 the number of logins per month was around 300 and the number of data
report requests was ten per month. The DB size is currently around 700 Mb.
4 Details on the information content
SIGRIAN contains data concerning irrigation features in collective irrigation areas
that are gathered by Water Management Boards (Consortia and Irrigation
associations), with the support of National Association for Land Reclamation and
Irrigation (ANBI), and Regions. Anyhow data integrated in SIGRIAN are validated
by Regions and are available for all Italian institutions with administrative
competence on water management.
Data collected are about administrative boundaries, personnel and concerned
areas, irrigation supply, irrigation network characteristics, hydrographic network,
crops. Data on private irrigation volumes at municipal and water body basis scale
will be available by 2018. The ever-changing system allows the integration of other
information useful for administrative and technical water management and for
analysis, such as: financial and structural data on projects funded at National and
Regional level, types of crops and irrigation water volumes used on collective
irrigation areas (measured or estimated) by decision support models for irrigation
water management applied by Consortia (mainly Irriframe-ANBI platform),
irrigation water abstraction volumes (measured or estimated) and quantitative and
qualitative status of water bodies (Ministry of the Environment).
517
Fig. 2. Sample of financial information on collective irrigation in SIGRIAN
Through this GEOdatabase, all stakeholders can easily access to a large amount of
information, both technically and economically related to the water resource
management in agriculture (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3). It will be used as a DSS (Decision
Support System) platform for economic evaluations to address policy related to water
resources in agriculture.
Fig. 3. Sample of district crops and related information on irrigation fees
SIGRIAN is useful to assess the optimal allocation of water resources and is
providing also support to the National Observatories of Water Uses (OWU). During
2016 the Italian Government identified measures to prevent and monitor the negative
consequences of drought. According to Water Framework Directive (WFD), the
OWUs were established. The OWUs were included among the measures provided in
the River Basin Management Plans for each Italian River Basin District. Members of
the OWU are the public water authorities.
518
SIGRIAN is also a key tool for data sharing to lead water-saving actions and
economic evaluation of externalities (negative or positive) related to drainage and
irrigation.
5 Conclusions
ICT tools can be used innovatively by water authorities to obtain information in real
time about water use, to track and forecast the water resource availability and to drive
the water polices. The information availability about current situation on a near real
time basis is crucial for decision making in water resource management mainly under
crisis conditions.
In 2015 to answer to ex-ante conditionality on water resources, the Italian
Ministry of Agriculture published the Guidelines for Irrigation Volumes
Quantification and Monitoring related to water pricing (Ministry decree July 31,
2015) that designate SIGRIAN as the reference GEOdatabase to collect the irrigation
volumes data originated from both private and public water users. Also for this
reason in the next years SIGRIAN will become a large repository of seasonal data on
water usage in agriculture. The adoption of smart metering technologies for the main
points of the irrigation network will provide SIGRIAN users with information in near
real-time about water use, thus monitoring water wastefulness and having better
control over the national water demand for irrigation.
Concerning the future development of the platform a new adaptive user interface
will be released in the next year together with a group of REST calls for the system
integration.
References
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Fostering sustainability, advancing innovation January 22nd 2017 in Berlin
2. Berbel Vecino J. and Gutiérrez Martín C., (2004) Sustainability of European
irrigated agriculture under Water Framework Directive and Agenda 2000. WADI,
European Commission, Luxembourg
3. Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23
October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of
water policy, OJ L 327, 22.12.2000.
4. ITU-T Technology Watch (2010) ICT as an Enabler for Smart Water
Management. Report
5. EC DG Connect (2015) ICT for water management roadmap. Report
6. Badjana H., Zander F., Kralisch S., Helmschrot J, Flügel W. (2015) An
information system for integrated land and water resources management in the
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Kara river basin (Togo and Benin). International journal of database management
systems vol.7, no.1, february 2015 doi : 10.5121/ijdms.2015.7102 15
7. Briquet, J.-P. (2013) Hydrological information systems and database management
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8. Haklay, M. (1999) From Environmental Information Systems to Environmental
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Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London: London.
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