The Background

Climate change and socio-economic growth are projected to severely challenge river basin development worldwide, calling for robust planning solutions with respect to such uncertain and evolving conditions. This is particularly relevant in monsoonal Southeast Asia, where large water storage systems play a key role for securing water, energy, and food to a rapidly growing and changing society. These systems require robust and adaptive operations capable of coping with high intra-annual and inter-annual hydroclimatic variability and to increasing frequency of extreme events. They also have to face multi-sector changing demands across multiple time scales, from daily operation to strategic river basin development.

The Project

The ambition of the project is to develop a decision analytic framework for supporting the robust, strategic planning of river basins in monsoonal areas with respect to future changes in water availability (climate change) and demands (socio-​economic and technological changes). The framework will integrate future climate scenarios, including a catalogue of extreme climate events, future water demand scenarios, and a high-​resolution infrastructure-​accounting hydrological model to build accurate projections of water availability that also include water management policies optimized by means of a strategic model, against which to assess sustainability and robustness of future river basin development plans. The focus will be on the Red River Basin, China-​Vietnam, a large transboundary river basin, where conflicts among different water uses, including hydropower production, flood control and water supply, and negative impacts on long-​term sustainability are expected to increase under the combined pressure of increasing water and energy demands, and climate change. Particularly, extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent and extreme.

The Science

REBECCA will advance the current state-of-the-art from different scientific disciplines and integrate it within a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary framework to support the robust, strategic planning of water infrastructures in river basins that will be highly impacted by climate and socio-economic changes, with a focus on monsoonal areas. The project will bring the current state-of-the-art of integrated water resources management a step further by: (i) developing a decision analytic framework that explicitly integrates multiple models and their feedbacks, including a detailed characterization of the co-variance between future hydro-climatic and socio-economic changes; (ii) quantifying the impacts of future hydro-climatic and socio-economic scenarios on water resources, planned infrastructures and strategic development plans of decision makers; (iii) identifying robust planning options (e.g., multi-purpose water reservoirs) that are able to deal with a vast array of highly uncertain future changes and still perform satisfactorily with respect to economic, environmental and societal aspects in order to foster environmentally and economically sustainable growth.

The Team

Project coordinator: Prof. Dr. Paolo Burlando, Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Andrea Castelletti, Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Dr. Anna Costa, Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Fink, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Dr. Roderick van der Linden, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Dr. Van Anh Truong, Meteorology and Hydrology Faculty, Hanoi University of Natural Resources and Environment, Vietnam

Contact: 

Prof. Dr. Paolo Burlando, Dr. Anna Costa

Background

The project contributes to research on novel low-cost approaches to environmental remediation that belongs among national priorities in all countries of the involved partners. The proposed technology will have a broader applicability for removal of non-polar, poorly water-soluble contaminants (pesticides, petroleum products etc.) that represent environmental burden and health risk of global scope. More specifically, the application of the floating photocatalysts for water decontamination in remote rural areas of Vietnam and elsewhere will in long-term lead to improvement of health standards of poor and underprivileged people based in areas affected by the overuse of herbicides and other toxic organic substances.

The Project

The main technological objective of FLOATCAT is to develop a new type of low-cost floating photocatalyst for solar-driven removal of non-polar, poorly water-soluble contaminants that represent environmental burden and health risk of global scope. This will be achieved by incorporation of a specific sorption function with high affinity to non-polar substances, which should fundamentally improve the existing floating photocatalyst via a synergic effect. Within the proposed project, the research and development work will culminate in laboratory pilot tests aimed at validating the technology for decontamination of water contaminated with non-polar test contaminants (e.g., herbicide diuron, insecticide DDT).  The newly developed technology will have a wider applicability for cleaning different types of surface water.

The Science

The main scientific objective of FLOATCAT is to obtain novel scientific insights into the advantages and possible operational bottlenecks of photocatalysis in complex composite architectures represented by floating photocatalysts with integrated sorption functionality. In addition, the photocatalysts will be modified with co-catalysts for oxygen reduction, which should lead to a significant enhancement of photocatalytic degradation rates since the oxygen reduction is often the rate-limiting step in environmental photocatalysis. Notably, some of the intermediates of photocatalytic degradation reactions can be highly toxic. Therefore, it is essential to investigate kinetics and mechanism of such oxidative degradation processes by means of analyzing chemical composition and toxicity of the reaction mixtures for variable extent of irradiation. Kinetic and mechanistic studies of relevant pollutants will therefore play an important role in the project.

The Team:

The FLOATCAT partners are:

Prof. Dr. Radim Beránek: Institute of Electrochemistry, Ulm University, Germany

Dr. Jaromír Jirkovský, J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

Ing. Jan Šubrt CSc.: Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

Dr. Hoang Hiep: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Environment, Vietnam National University of Agriculture, Hanoi, Vietnam

Contact:

Prof. Radim Beránek: radim.beranek@uni-ulm.de 

featured image from R. Beránek

Background

Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, will face major water scarcity problems in the future. Agriculture uses more than 70% of the consumed water in Thailand, and changing climate patterns have led to droughts and irregular rainfall in cassava growing regions. The challenge for Southeast Asia is to remain an important producer of agricultural crops while optimizing yields, manage water use efficiently, and guarantee a livelihood for farmers. Therefore an effective water management needs to be implemented. Especially, cassava growers are small-scale farmers with a low-income need to implement a sustainable use of resources including water. Cassava production can be significantly increased through irrigation, but solutions to optimize cassava yields need to be affordable and make effective use of limited water available.

The Project

The project brings together plant eco-physiologists, engineers, agronomists, extension workers and cassava farmers in a set of three participatory workshops in which we exchange knowledge, identify challenges and design solutions. We will test solutions and monitor results with recently developed on-farm sensor technology. One such solution will be model based irrigation. The model will use on-farm sensory data and weather data to make yield predictions and deliver information through a mobile app. Necessary plant physiological data will be collected in managed trials on experimental farms and in targeted greenhouse experiments. 

The Science

Plant Physiology: Cassava root systems are sensitive to soil water conditions affecting yield directly through storage root formation and loss (rot). Irrigation thus not only supplies the crop with water, but also steers its development. The project aims to get a more fundamental understanding of this interaction, and to develop relationships that can be used to improve model-based cassava yield predictions. 

Agronomy: The project explores better irrigation practices for cassava, and the applicability of such practices on real farms. 

Engineering: The project tests exploitation of low-cost sensors in real-world conditions and integration of sensor data into an easy mobile phone base app. 

Mathematical crop modeling: The project will develop a novel cassava crop model, with stronger foundations in root eco-physiology. 

The Team

The DIRECTION partners are:

• Coordinator : Dr. Ir. Johannes A. Postma, Plant Sciences, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Juelich, Germany
• Asst. Prof. Dr Treenut Saithong, 2) Asst. Prof. Dr Saowalak Kalapanulak, 3) Dr. Warakorn Rattanaareekul & 4) Dr. Tanyarat  Khongkhuntian. King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), Bangkok, Thailand
• Dr. Teera Phatrapornnant, National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, National Science and Technology Development Agency, Bangkok, Thailand (NECTEC / NSTDA).
• Assoc. Prof. Dr. Poramate Banterng, Agronomy Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
• Prof. Le Huy Ham, Agricultural Genetics Institute (AGI / VNU), Vietnam Academy of Agriculture Science, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Hanoi, Vietnam
• Dr. Wojciechowski. Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institute for Bio- and Geosciences (Plant Sciences, IBG-2), Jülich, Germany

Contact: 

Dr. Ir. J.A.Postma j.postma@fz-juelich.de