Water Resources and Soil Management In Italy

Italy has always had a long dramatic history of extreme events such as landslides, flooding, land degradation and drought. Much has been done in terms of prevention and monitoring but still there is much left to do, in particular introducing innovative alert systems based on the integration of real‐time weather forecasting with national alert and protection systems. Recent drought events in the past decade have put new light on the pressing need to improve water use efficiency, introducing on one hand new criteria regarding water resources governance and management by water authorities and agencies involved in this, and on the other, fostering innovative techniques that may enable farmers to improve overall economic and sustainable production by adopting rigorous criteria in terms of managing techniques such as water scheduling. A great effort on this matter has been made by the National Association of Land Reclamation and Irrigation Consortia (ANBI), by introducing and spreading the use of the innovative IRRIFRAME software. IRRIFRAME is an expert system the use of which has allowed the saving up to today, according to data published by ANBI, something between 15 and 25% of water for farmers, increasing both the quantity and quality of agricultural production at the same time.