5° Focus Group Meeting in Pisa

On 28 February 2017, the 5^th Focus Group for the the Massacciuccoli Lake Case Study was successfully organised at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna premises. This case study is one of the two run in Tuscany, being the second one run by Regione Toscana on Follonica-Scarlino plain. These meetings are very relevant not only to discuss, plan and validate the FREEWAT open and free software, but also to support the awareness raising of FREEWAT among stakeholders, river basin and water managers.

The meeting was attended by about 20 representatives from the academia, research environment,  associations of environmentalists (such as Legambiente) and key players such as the Consorzio Bonifica and ARPAT – (The Regional Agency for the Environment Protection). It covered several aspects, including the agricultural and climate change challenges, of course, related to water resources.

The meeting was opened by Rudy Rossetto, FREEWAT coordinator, who briefly presented the project, its main objectives and outcome highlighting the FREEWAT software as an open and free tool, conceived mainly for the emerging economies’ countries and already requested by several EU countries.

Further to Dr. Rossetto’s introduction the floor was given to Ing. Andrea Di Grazia, from the Autorità del Bacino del fiume Serchio,  who provided a presentation on the Massacciuccoli Lake water quality tackling the issues of water salinisation. Participants active and stimulating discussions made the almost three-hour meeting productive and paved the way to the decision of three scenarios, from the seven identifies in the previous Focus Group meeting,  and their objectives and expected results that will be run shortly to validate and work as experiments of the FREEWAT platform.

The meeting was organised and moderated by Dr. Sabine Gennai-Schott,  the minutes of the meeting will be incorporated and  part of the of the Policy Briefs final report to be distributed to policy and decision makers including the European MPs.