This work aims to describe the use of DANIA (National Database on Investment for Irrigation and Environment) as the implementation tool in the projects' selection procedure of Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) (I4.3 - M2C4) for funding irrigation network improving according to WFD objectives and DNSH principle. DANIA was the instrument through which irrigation boards submitted their projects for funding, then selected by Ministry of Agriculture according to eligibility and selection criteria defined and automatically applied to submitted projects basing on information collected in DANIA. The efficacy of this selection procedure in term of reduction of procedural times and data reliability have been analysed. Comparing the time of the different evaluation steps with that of the previous investment Programs, the use of DANIA has allowed to significantly reduce the time needed for the completion of all evaluation procedure, both in terms of days occurred per funded project (70% less than the previous procedure) and in terms of funded amount per days of evaluation (approximately double of the previous one). About data reliability, the information inserted in DANIA, and then the relative score assigned to projects, were confirmed by expert evaluation for the 69% of the funded projects and none of these differences is related to technical feature of the project. This allows us to argue that the applied selection procedure is reliable and that, in general, the irrigation boards enter accurate information.
Over the last ten years, Italian Ministry of Agriculture (MASAF) has implemented a long-term strategy for the adaptation and efficiency of irrigation networks, to reduce risks related to water scarcity and floods in agriculture. Several investments Programs have been funded with European and domestic funds to apply this strategy, starting from the National Rural Development Program (NRDP 2014-2020) financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), which was complemented by a similar measure with national funds from the Development and measure is part of Italian commitment within the Water Action Agenda of United Nations (PNRR – Investments in the resilience of the irrigation agro system for better management of water resources | Department of Economic and Social Affairs (un.org).
The planning of these investments was aimed at improving water management, for the sustainability and competitiveness of the agricultural sector, with a focus on environmental issues.
The coordinated implementation of this plans was supported by two different national information systems, SIGRIAN and DANIA, realized by Research Centre for Agricultural Policies and Bioeconomy (CREA PB), on behalf of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture (MASAF).
SIGRIAN (National Information System for Water Management in Agriculture) is a WebGIS
platform (https://sigrian.crea.gov.it/) providing an overview of the Italian irrigation system [
DANIA (National Database of Investments for Irrigation and Environment) is an online database
(https://dania.crea.gov.it/) collecting projects on irrigation networks implemented by irrigation
boards, both planned and funded. For each project, technical, financial, and environmental data are
collected in four homogeneous sections of information, allowing the projects to be catalogued (and
thus selected) and monitored basing on objective criteria and parameters, useful in the programming
and in the monitoring phase of the funded projects, to evaluate the efficacy of the policies, through
the quantification of appropriate indicators. The database model and the data stored in DANIA were
outlined in a previous work [
DANIA and SIGRIAN have their own specific application for which they were designed but their jointly use improved the quality of policy programming and monitoring, in the pursuit of sustainable development [4] [5].
From the procedural point of view, over the time MASAF projects’ financing procedure has progressively moved from the political agreement between the Ministry and the Regions to multicriteria selection through public tender, with direct application of projects by potential beneficiary (irrigation boards) [6].
This path was helped by the use of DANIA over time in all phases (programming, implementing and monitoring) of plans implementation.
Within the Mission 2 – Component 4 of Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Ministry of Agriculture planned the investment 4.3 - Investments in the resilience of the irrigation agro system for better management of water resources, providing for infrastructural interventions on the irrigation networks in order to improve water management, reduce water losses and promote the measurement and monitoring on collective networks (through the installation of meters and remote control systems) (PNRR – Investments in the resilience of the irrigation agro system for better management of water resources | Department of Economic and Social Affairs (un.org)).
Part of the available budget was used to select new projects, according to the new call for funding in 2021 for about 520 million euro; other 360 million euro were used to guarantee the progress of projects already funded with other domestic funds, which were included in the timeline of the measure because of their coherence with its aim and timing.
DANIA, jointly with SIGRIAN, was applied in programming and implementing the measure and will also apply in monitoring phase (Figure 1).
In the programming stage, for the evaluation and monitoring of measure, two performance indicators have been set up: 1. Increase the percentage of withdrawal sources equipped with meters from 24% (baseline) to at least 26% in 2024, and 29% in 2026 (M2C4-34); 2. Increase the percentage of irrigated area that benefit from efficient use of irrigation resources from 8% (baseline) to at least 12% in 2024, and 24% in 2026 (M2C4-35).
The value of baseline and target (ongoing and final) was defined by DANIA and SIGRIAN information. In the monitoring stage, the actual value achievable for these indicators will be assess at the medium term (2024) and final deadline (2026) by DANIA information on funded projects.
In the implementation of the measure, DANIA was also the instrument through which the projects were submitted by irrigation boards and selected by Ministry of Agriculture according to eligibility and selection criteria defined by MASAF.
For the funding of new projects, eligibility and selecting criteria (Fig. 2 and 3) were settled down in order to select interventions able to guarantee water saving and water use efficiency, in line with the objectives of the Water framework directive (WFD), the “do no significant harm” (DNSH) principle and the implementation deadlines set by the NRRP.
Figure 2 summarises the 23 eligibility criteria for accessing the call for funding. Figure 3 shows the 11 selection criteria for ranking projects.
All these parameters were defined by MASAF on the basis of some DANIA fields and published with a Ministerial Decree in June 2021, when the call for funding was lunched. Even the score of some selection criteria was defined according to statistic elaboration of DANIA information.
From June to September 2021, irrigation boards submitted their projects in DANIA, declaring their willingness to apply for funding within the measure using two specific fields of DANIA: “Phase = Submitted for funding” and “Source of Funding = Recovery Plan”.
For a successful application, irrigation boards had to compile in DANIA all the information necessary to evaluate the eligibility and selection criteria.
DANIA does not currently provide any data processing functionality, as the possibilities for processing information are potentially infinite and variable depending on the methods of allocating funds, both by Ministries and Regions. Therefore, the verification of the eligibility and selection conditions was conducted “outside” DANIA by implementing a specific Excel spreadsheet to process the data declared in DANIA.
After the submission deadline (25 September 2021), the data of the 249 projects submitted by 97 irrigation boards were downloaded by DANIA and imported into the aforementioned Excel spreadsheet for the purpose of checking the eligibility and selection criteria, as well as for the allocation of provisional scores.
Then, a list of 159 eligible (respecting all the eligibility criteria) and ranked (basing on the score assigned trough selection criteria) projects was immediately produced and published by MASAF in only five days (MASAF Decree n. 0490962 of 30/09/2021).
Basing on the available budget, MASAF started a verification procedure by asking only the beneficiary of the first 57 projects in the ranking to produce documentation supporting the data declared in DANIA. These documents were analysed by a group of 12 experts who concluded the investigation in 3 months.
In September 2022, one year after the end of the selection process, MASAF published a list of 42 projects selected for funding, with an allocated budget of 517.4 million euro.
The effectiveness of this procedure can be analysed considering the reduction of verification times and the declared data reliability.
First of all, it is possible to compare the time taken for each evaluation stage with that taken for previous investment programmes, such as the NRDP and CDP: with regard to the eligibility check phase, the efficacy of evaluation, in terms of the number of days occurred per eligible project, can be estimate in 0.03 days/projects, which is considerably less than the previous value of 5.4 and 8.9, respectively (Table 1).
Furthermore, an efficacy evaluation can also be applied to the whole projects selection, from the deadline of call for funding to the publication of the list of funded projects, both in terms of days occurred per funded project (70% less than the previous procedure) and in terms of funded amount per day of evaluation (up to seven times the previous one) (Table 2).
The results show that the use of DANIA for the selection process markedly reduced the time required to identify the project’s eligibility for funding and to complete the evaluation process. The evaluation by an expert committee requires that all eligible projects must be analysed in order to be included in a ranking, even if the budget is sufficient for only a small percentage of them. Conversely, the automatic application with DANIA was utilised to submit only those projects that were in useful position for funding and eligible for ranking by an expert committee evaluation.
In terms of the reliability of the data, the group of experts appointed by MASAF to carry out the project appraisal corroborated DANIA’s data for 69% of the projects in question (29 projects out of a total of 42), thus confirming consistency with the data provided by the irrigation boards themselves in the project documentation. For the remaining 13 projects, 14 incorrect data were found regarding some selection criteria (S8, S9 e S11 in Fig. 3) whose evaluation by the irrigation boards was susceptible to a certain degree of subjectivity and/or error (see Fig. 4).
This allows us to argue that the applied selection procedure is reliable and that, in general, the irrigation boards enter accurate information, so that in the subsequent investigation phase a good correspondence between the data was found.
However, some critical issues can be highlighted. First of all, this multi-criteria procedure proves suitable for the evaluation of projects whose technical validity and coherence with territorial objectives have been previously assessed, so that their compliance with the specificities and objectives of each funding programme in terms of admissible actions and intervention objectives can be verified. That is why projects in DANIA must be previously accepted by the reference Regions, which characterise them by an intervention priority (from high to low).
Furthermore, although some procedures are in place to ensure the completeness, accuracy and consistency of the information, the verification of project data is not completely automated, but requires formal verification by the Funding Body (in this case MASAF). A procedure for verifying and formalizing the data entered is currently under consideration with a view to making it more official.
Another crucial aspect of this process is the potential for duplication of projects within DANIA, whereby individual projects may be grouped or split on occasion to meet the specific requirements of funding calls. One potential solution that could be explored in the future is the development of application masks that are linked to, but independent of, project data.
SIGRIAN and DANIA were developed under the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and Italian Development and Cohesion Fund, respectively.
The author(s) have not employed any Generative AI tools. [4] R. Zucaro, V. Manganiello, R. Lorenzetti, M. Ferrigno, Application of Multi-Criteria Analysis selecting the most effective Climate change adaptation measures and investments in the Italian context, Bio-Based and Applied Economics, 10 (2021) 109-122. doi: 10.36253/bae-9545 [5] V. Manganiello, M. Ferrigno, SIGRIAN and DANIA to promote measurement of agriculture water use, in: Proceedings of 12th World Congress on Water Resources and Environment, EWRA 2023, Thessaloniki, Greece. [6] M. Ferrigno, L. A. Folino, N. Crisponi, S. Capone, V. Manganiello, SIGRIAN and DANIA to support water related policies for efficient and sustainable irrigation, in: Proceedings of 14th European Conference on Precision Agriculture, ECPA 2023, Bologna, Italy.