The work develops and improves an operational system for real-time forecast of irrigation water need to support parsimonious water management in case of present or forecasted drought period. The system will be a prototype version of a worldwide web platform that will support users in parsimonious irrigation water management from water authorities to single farmers according to actual and forecasted irrigation water demand. The project starts from an already implemented system developed by project partners in the “SIM project” funded by ERA-NET Cofund Water Works 2014 under Water JPI (Horizon 2020). In particular, the system will support: i) farmers to maintain soil moisture in an optimum interval allowing water saving and reducing plant stress, ii) irrigation consortiums to manage the water among users; iii) water authorities to manage water withdraw from reservoirs. The system combines satellite monitoring of soil moisture and of evaporative fluxes using thermal infrared and microwave data, quantitative meteorological forecast, detailed distributed hydrological modelling of soil water balance, crop growth model. The system provides real-time and forecasted soil moisture behavior at high spatial and temporal resolutions (from 10 m to 250 m, from 1 hour to daily) with forecast horizons from few up to thirty days. This forecasted soil moisture will be continuously compared with water stress thresholds characteristic of each specific crop and its growth stage, allowing to determine the correct timing and amount of irrigation. Economic impacts of a parsimonious water use will be evaluated using specific indicators from single farm to larger irrigation districts considering not only the role of water and energy saved in financial terms based on the local cost of the water and crop production, but also the increase of crop yield and the environmental benefit. The proposed methodology will be applied in different case studies in the Mediterranean area in Italy, Spain and Morocco, which are characterized, by different climatic conditions, water availability, crop types and irrigation schemes. The proposed system, for its versatility, can be easily exported for applications to the other case studies worldwide as one in China. The presence of Chinese partner will help in demonstrating this. The project stakeholders (Water authorities, farmers consortium and single farms) for the different case studies will be involved from the project beginning sharing project approach, activities and type of outputs, customizing the system so that its uptake will be easily promoted in the stakeholder habits. The proposed project complements previous partners’ heritage, providing the necessary starting experience on integrating meteorological, soil hydrological, remote sensing and economic modelling in the stakeholders needs. The expected innovative tool will have impact both on the scientific community, as well as on operative farms and water authorities. These results will be guarantee from the work team that represents a good compromise between research institutes and small enterprises, which can implement advance research tools into an operative industrial product.

COALA will develop Copernicus-based information service for irrigation and nutrient management for the Australian agricultural systems, starting from the consolidated past experiences of the proposed European partnership, but based on strong collaboration with Academic Australian institutions and business players in the agricultural sector of Australia. Operational farming advisory services will be further developed on one hand to include nutrient managements on the other to provide water accounting data from the farm to the district and/or basin scale. COALA will monitor crops development, water and nutrient status, irrigated areas by means of innovative algorithms based on Sentinel Earth Observation data, which will be accessed by means of the new cloud platforms (DIAS) of Copernicus. In-situ and other source of data will be used to improve the accuracy of the products for the final users, which will be on three different levels: i) farmers, ii) irrigation infrastructure operators, iii) basin authorities. COALA will demonstrate that Copernicus data and new DIAS infrastructure can greatly improve the availability of information for management decisions on irrigation and nutrient management at all decision levels, from the Water Authority in charge of monitoring the implementation of the basin exploitation plan, to the farm level, passing through the irrigation infrastructure operators, in charge of managing irrigation distribution infrastructures. COALA tools and data will improve the decision making and policy for sustainable use of water and nutrients in multi-functional ecosystems. Through this project, it will be possible to explore new business opportunities in Australia for the European industry of Earth Observation services.