TwinBasin Cluster

       At the request of European Commission, an informal cluster has been created between the FP6 project related to twinning matters, namely RIVERTWIN (co-ordinator University of Stuggart-Hohenheim), TWINBAS (co-ordinator IVL), BRAHMATWINN (co-ordinator Friedrich-Schiller University (FSU-Jena)) and WADE (co-ordinator CSIC). The role of this cluster is to exchange information between the projects and to explore further cross-fertilisation issues, leading to an improvement of expected outcomes of the area.
       A common position (PDF 29 Ko) has to define the interface between the projects and the activities to be developed.

They are 5 Specific Targeted Projects and one Co-ordination Action :  

• WADE (http://www.ccma.csic.es/dpts/suelos/hidro/wade/contents.htm) : The WADE project aims to assess long-term (decades to centuries) water resources in selected semiarid to hyperarid ephemeral river basins by determining long-term transmission losses from floods and quantifying floodwater recharge into alluvial aquifers. The research will be undertaken in 4 research basins, twinning catchments in Spain and Israel with study catchments in Namibia and South Africa.

• RIVERTWIN (http://www.rivertwin.org/) : The project “RIVERTWIN” aims in developing, adjusting, testing and implementing an integrated regional model for the strategic planning of water resources management in twinned river basins under contrasting ecological, social and economic conditions. The model will be first developed and tested in a European river basin with high data availability and data density. The transferability of the model to other regions with different economic level, ecological standards and with low data availability will be jointly tested by the project team and river basin organisations in two river basins in West Africa and Uzbekistan.

• TWINBAS (http://ivl.dataphone.se/twinbas/) : To reach the strategic objectives of TWINBAS, a number of research tasks on hydrology, modelling of pollution flow, impact assessment, socio-economics, scenario analyses and action efficiency have to be carried through. For all these activity areas, the goal is to bring knowledge to a level where IWRM can be implemented for the five twinned river basins; Okavango (Botswana), Nura (Kazakhstan), Bío Bío (Chile) Thames (UK) and Norrström (Sweden).

New Clusters:

• BRAHMATWINN will enhance capacity to carry out a harmonised integrated water resourcesmanagement (IWRM) approach as addressed by the european Water Initiative (EWI) in headwater river systems of alpine mountain massifs already impacted from climate change, and to establish transfer of professional IWRM expertise, approaches and tools based on case studies carried out in twinning European and Asian river basins.
   

• STRIVER will develop interdisciplinary methods to assess and implement IWRM. Based on the development of a multidisciplinary knowledge base assessment in all case studies (policy, social and natural sciences) and an early stage development of IWRM conceptual framework, the project will undertake IWRM in the four selected twinned catchments covering six countries in Europe and Asia.

The Co-ordination action is TWINBASIN project.

Common position (PDF 29 Ko) presenting the potential co-operation activities between the 4 projects.
It is of outmost importance to disseminate the knowledge gained from the projects to the water management community, both within the consortiums, and outside ; it is also stressed that exchange of information could lead to better implementation of individual projects. The following activities will be supported by the four consortium :

- The projects’ web sites will be linked (the WebRing of twinning projects), to facilitate the surf of users between the respective sites.

- In order to capture the experience of twin activities within their consortium, the co-ordinators will support the signature of the TWINBASIN XN Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) by their partners, and their effective participation in the Specific Interest Groups (SIGs) exchanges.

- The projects’ co-ordinators will be invited to participate at the TWINBASIN XN Steering Committee meetings once a year as observers. At a specific meeting in connection to the SC meeting, the four co-ordinators will meet, present their project progress and discuss how to standardise or harmonise methodologies if similar methods are applied in the other projects (scenario development, model application).

- A common electronic newsletter will be issued once a year, with information collected from all projects, and disseminated to all individual project letter subscribers, as a special issue.

- Experts from each project will present regularly key outcomes of their work through the web seminars run by TWINBASIN XN, as guest-lecturers (free of charge).