The objective of this topic is to compare and demonstrate the potential of available state of the art tools to forecast the availability of water resources at the regional and local scale, building also on JRC and other available tools developed for the European scale. It should take into consideration both the global water cycle (blue and green water) and sectoral water demands for both seasonal and long-term horizon, with an integrated water management approach. It should consider water allocation tools for different uses integrating the quality needed for each use, as well as tools for resilient urban planning and water infrastructure management allowing among others run-off control, reducing flood and drought risks, ensuring safety of citizens and infrastructures and support to biodiversity protection/restoration.

Demonstrations should take place in diverse European regions on a suitable scale e.g., river basin, and should bring together a wide range of relevant stakeholders, including relevant water sectors, water managers and authorities, urban and rural planners, policy makers and the civil society. Solutions aiming at fostering and restoring natural retention measures to keep water in the landscape, mitigating drainage losses, enhancing water retention in watersheds to mitigate extreme events, including both drought and flood, should be explored. Proper attention should be given to actions aiming at overcoming the fragmentation of water monitoring and observation data by strengthening the complementarity between satellites, in situ data, participatory research and integrated assessment models. This should foster the consolidation for better-quality and higher frequency data, reducing uncertainty and increasing trust and making them responsive to end-users’ needs.

Appropriate climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies and tools, such as, tools for resilient urban and rural planning to manage runoff, reduce flood risk and ensure the safety of citizens and water infrastructures, should then be developed to strengthen the resilience of the water sector. These strategies should in particular assess the following:

• strategies and technical cost-efficient and sustainable solutions for alternative water resources production adapted to the anticipated use;
• the governance of water resource management to better consider the interlinkages of various water related policies to ensure reliable allocation of water for different uses and cross-sectoral coordination;
• the suitability of current indicators to appropriately define water efficiency in various sectors and provide a harmonised methodology to increase water efficiency;
• strategies to anticipate the consequences of recurrent extreme events, including land use analysis (e.g. floods and droughts) and reduce the associated risks;
• water resilience by exploring water transfer effects for seasonal, annual and pluriannual time-horizon on ecosystems, populations, agriculture, industrial consumption;
• the suitability of solutions to support biodiversity protection/restoration with attention given to avoiding spread of invasive alien species and to ensuring enough water for entire ecosystems (all species and their populations in healthy state).

Moreover, the economic foundation of the current water management systems, including water pricing and trade policies, in the context of changing climate should be reviewed to provide elements for a new economic framework helping to better structure the cost of building/operating/monitoring the water infrastructures, increase demand for innovative solutions and strengthen private investments for large scale deployment of these solutions in the water sector.