Project Summary

The severe drought affecting regions of Europe, especially Mediterranean countries, in the last two decades continues expanding and worsening. Compared to the 2021, in the first six months of 2022 drought hazard increased , especially in: France, Romania and several Mediterranean Regions (Central and Southern Italy, Southern Greece, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina and the Iberian Peninsula) [(EDO)/2022]. Water supply may be compromise in the coming years. In southern Europe, the availability of water resources could drop by up to 40% with increasingly negative impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and energy production as well. Urgent transnational resilient measures as well as an improved risk preparedness and management are needed. That required the communities to be more and more active part in building adaptation strategies as well as in the implementation of effective water management measures to reduce and prevent drought risks. In one word, local communities are now called to actively build their resilience. Starting from these assumptions, the PRIMES project aims to build drought risk resilient communities throughout their full engagement and proactive participation in implementing joint prevention strategies and local community water management plans. Furthermore, it provides an innovative cooperation framework where both organizations, institutions as well as final users (industries, citizens, families, farmers, etc.) cooperate for improving, as community, their daily water footprint and their preparedness to prevent the drought risks. The project is conceived to respond to the IPA-Adrion Priority Axis 2 challenge in the area of adaptation management, disaster risk prevention and community resilient in the AI Region. Designed on 3 WPs, the project aims at reaching the following specific objectives: (1) to establish in the AI Region the PRIMES Multilevel Network for drought risk reduction and prevention as a transnational governance system which act under a concerted policy and methodology framework working for transferring locally the PRIMES strategies into concrete adaptation and prevention actions. (2) to adopt a joint ICT Infrastructure for strengthening interaction between Institutions and water users (citizens, farmers, schools, families, industries, public institutions, etc.), by improving drought-warning procedures and data exchange creating at the same time awareness of the risks from climate change stimulating actions of prevention and voluntary adaptation measures. (3) to move communities from a passive approach to the drought risk management, relevant to emergency response, to a pro-active one, supporting the phase of risk prevention through the active participation in implementing adaptation measures and actions, allowing the knowledge diffusion and innovative collaboration ways at local/regional/national/transnational level. In the framework of WP1 the Transnational Cooperation Protocol (output 1.1) officially state the establishment of the PRIMES Transnational Network as well as the 8 Local Drought Committees (LDC) including local private/public stakeholders, working for transferring locally the PRIMES strategies into concrete adaptation and prevention actions. Furthermore, a Common PRIMES Guidelines and 8 Road-Maps will be designed by a Transnational Scientific Board for implementing PRIMES Communities in 8 pilot areas. In the WP2 two important project outputs will be delivered: (Output 2.1) the innovative integrated ICT Infrastructure (Web Platform, a Digital Tool-kit and a Drought-Alert-App ) implemented to provide local communities with a web friendly tool-kit for activating voluntary adaptation actions; (Output 2.2) the PRIMES Strategy for drought risk resiliency in AI Region which will establish the common vision where the Local Communities should act for building their resiliency. In WP3, 8 Pilot Communities (2IT,2HR,1ME,1SRB,1GR,1BIH) will test the PRIMES Guidelines and Digital Toolkit previously implemented for assessing their resilient profile, measuring their water footprint and their vulnerabilities and consequently implementing their Community Water Management Plans [Output 3.1] setting common goals, priorities and possibly connecting adaptation actions at network level in order to maximize the strategy impacts. In the framework of all WPs innovative actions of capacity building and training, awareness campaigns in schools, Community Water Day Events and Transnational networking are foreseen in order to support cooperation by following the bi-directional perspective "from global to local and back".