• Energy Research

AbstractHydrological uncertainty due to daily flow variability and to the effect of climate change on water resources is a critical topic in the feasibility evaluations of hydro-power projects, especially for run-of-river power plant.The effect produced by these factors on the annual energy output of such type of plant was investigated. Empirical methods to improve the performance of the plant are proposed, which enable the choice of the most suitable design flow (Qd) according to the hydrological features of the river, to the frequency of dry and wet years in the basin and to the target energy production.

In many countries, water supplies are limited and must be managed for different uses. Providing additional resources for irrigation can be an expensive option, with an unsustainable impact on small farms and on the environment. Therefore, the main efforts should concentrate on the optimal management of existing water resources, paying particular attention to the adequate management of water demands. In Italy, the majority of scattered smallholder farmers are not provided with enough information on how to correctly manage water for irrigation. This paper presents the developing of a web-based irrigation decision support system adaptable and scalable to individual farms. The irrigation advisory service has been calibrated and validated for pomegranate trees, aubergine, and zucchini through 2 years of tests, in a farm in Southern Italy (Calabria). The results are very satisfactory, both in terms of water resources management for irrigation, and for the feedback provided by the farmers involved in the project. Future development regarding the application of wireless technology in smart irrigation is also evaluated.

The management of water resources always requires more and diverse approaches in which multiple skills and capacities are nested together, especially when critical situations are taken into account, such as climate change scenarios. The SimBaT software is a Decision Support Systems for water resource allocation and management. In this study, SimBaT is applied to the Montedoglio reservoir in the Tiber River Basin (Central Italy). The case study highlights how this methodology can be applied for a proactive management of critical scenarios in periods of drought due to climate change hypothesis. © 2013 The Authors.

Problems in the sustainable exploitation of water resources are mainly due to the spatial distribution of uses and are worsened by uncontrolled withdrawals by different activities. In this context, in order to evaluate and manage the available water resources, a decision support system has been developed to support the decision-making processes. This system was implemented on a web platform, in order to manage spatial data and to analyze information on water resources. The system also integrates a WEB-GIS engine for the elaboration and regionalization of data over the river network. The web architecture also makes these tools widely accessible and easily shareable by all stakeholders. The Web-based application was tested successfully in the Tiber River Basin (Central Italy) and focuses on the building of a hydrological database together with an evaluation model for surface water resources. The results provide synthetic information on the sustainability of water allocation scenarios, with particular regard to the feasibility of allowing new dissipative water withdrawal, such as dissipative water use in agricultural production for precision irrigation. The software technology of this project relies on open source code and can also be applied in other fields for the sustainable management of environmental resources.