There is a growing interest on achieving a better understanding on the interactions between land use and climate and their effect on water resources and people's livelihoods, with the aim of improving long-term sustainable water use. This is even more relevant in areas such as the EU Mediterranean (EUM) region, which is a major climate change hotspot due to water scarcity, concentration of activities, and reliance on climate-sensitive resources. Irrigated agriculture is the largest blue water user in the EUM, accounting for more than 50% of total water withdrawal, largely doubling the EU average. Among non-extractive water uses, forests and rainfed agriculture have the largest green-water footprint and play a fundamental role on the allocation of effective rainfall between green- and blue-water flows, determining the water availability for other uses. INNOMED promotes a holistic approach to water resources management by: i) considering the full water cycle as manageable and the catchment scale as the most relevant management level; and ii) addressing the integrated management of land and water, with a special focus on irrigated agriculture and forests. Its main objective is to develop and test advanced modelling tools to quantify the physical and economic effects of alternative land management options in order to improve water use efficiency in both sectors and promote sustainable water management solutions. INNOMED addresses specific scientific challenges in: i) estimating the allocation of green- and blue-water flows of different land uses and their spatial and temporal variations, at the catchment scale; ii) determining the water footprint of different management options on forests and irrigated crops, including experimental trials, field monitoring and modelling, at the field scale; iii) integrating the physical and economic flows resulting from alternative management options. An enhanced interface between scientists and stakeholders (water and forest managers and farmers) in five pilot study sites will allow: i) mapping and devising current and innovative water-use efficient land management options; ii) gathering relevant biophysical and socio-economic data needed for analysis; and iii) focusing on relevant issues for the practical implementation of IWRM in the pilot study sites and beyond. INNOMED will provide scientific research outcomes of high standards taking into account the current biophysical and socio-economic challenges in the EUM region, and provide resilient solutions aiming at reducing the pressure for water in the agriculture and forestry sectors, while strengthening international cooperation in water research.

CLIM2POWER will develop a climate service that integrates seasonal weather forecasts into decision making in the electricity sector. In particular, we assess the value of current and possible future seasonal forecasts for an improved management of power generation portfolios. For that purpose, cutting-edge seasonal forecasts are down-scaled and coupled with stochastic power system models to estimate the impact of seasonal weather conditions on renewable electricity generation and electricity and district heating demand. Subsequently, we derive optimal operation schedules for the electricity sector, such as optimal operation of hydro-storage and of fossil fuel acquisition, applying a set of existing bottom-up, technology rich power system models. Possible impacts from changing renewable supply and demand on the power-system as a whole and electricity prices are also derived. While the final climate service is going to be made available for the whole Europe, we additionally develop four regional case studies in Portugal, France, Sweden and in the German-Austrian market zone to validate the European model. Additionally, the case studies put a different focus on markets and market prices, dam operation restrictions due to ecological regulation in the river systems, and flexibility options in the power sector. As climate change may introduce changes to the seasonality of climate processes, future climate scenarios are assessed in an additional sensitivity analysis. The climate service is developed together with important stakeholders from the sector in an iterative process and is made available as public web service online. In particular power generation & trading companies, power system operators & regulators, power consumers, and water managers are going to directly profit from the outcome of our project.