WatERP: Water Enhanced Resources Planning (ERP) "Where water supply meets demand""

With an ever-growing water supply demand reaching ecological and economic limits, the need for innovative water management is acute. Water supply management involves several actors. While many management tools exists, these are not used in a collaborative environment, thus a need for more integrated approaches is needed. This paper presents a quality cost-benefit solution for these needs developed WatERP Project. WatERP consists of an open management platform (OMP) for water supply distribution systems that will integrate real-time knowledge on available water supplies and demand, across geographic and organizational scales, so that the entire water distribution network can be improved in an integrated and collaborative manner by the actors and users involved. This platform will improve water governance and foster water-savings culture in Europe. If operations affecting water flows and storage can be viewed by all water regulation operators, increased cooperation results. If consumers can view their actual consumption along with water availability estimates, behavioural change occurs. WatERP encourages water data accessibility and sharing for improving management of water supply systems, enabling dynamic and agile interactions among the different actors involved in the water supply chain. WatERP provides water governance while maintaining the autonomy and independence of the actors involved. The research leading to these results has received funding from the EC funding scheme 7th Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013, WatERP project grant agreement n° 318603. This paper reflects only the authors,, research and the Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.