As Climate Change and population growth worsen the water scarcity (i.e. balance between water availability and demand) situation in Mediterranean countries, the water quality gets similarly impaired, thus threatening the supply of water of good quality. These threats on human health and wellbeing are also accompanied by major impacts on the ecological status of Mediterranean water bodies, likely impairing the freshwater-related ecosystem services such as water purification and recreation. To counteract these trends, many research and policy initiatives have been launched to better estimate water resources, ecological status or ecosystem services in the Mediterranean region, as well as initiatives to foster integrated water management. However, none of those has put all these pieces together to solve to puzzle and support decision-makers in the struggle they face nowadays.

Given this context, INWAT will develop and improve tools to analyze, understand and predict hydrology, chemical and ecological status, and services in the Mediterranean area characterized by temporary waterways, and will integrate all these pieces in a decision-support system that will be co-developed with stakeholders from different case-studies reflecting different socio-environmental settings from the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.