WIZ

The overall goal of the ‘WIZ’ – WaterIZe spatial planning project was to integrate the protection and sustainable management of water in urban planning processes and local policy areas. The project aimed to incorporate long-term analysis of drinking water management in urban spatial planning, by creating a platform for local authorities to be involved in decision processes. The project contributed to the integration of the European Framework for Adapting to Climate Change into other local and EU regulations, particularly in relation to future water management conditions, and to the establishment of a network of European projects to facilitate transnational co-operation.

The WIZ project developed and demonstrated an innovative approach to drinking water management, which takes into account the potential impacts of climate change. The project’s approach involves water resource allocation in relation to request trends and expected resource availability. This will facilitate the adaptions that will be needed to ensure future availability of water within informed urban planning decisions and – with regards to citizens – life choices.

The WIZ project team developed an online platform that includes two services: WIZ4All and WIZ4Planners. Citizens can find information about current and future water availability for specific locations via the WIZ4All service. WIZ4Planners is a decision-support service for local authorities and other stakeholders concerned with territorial and urban planning. It provides information related to estimates of the needs and availability of clean water, with comparisons between settlement scenarios and climatic scenarios, and also gives estimates of the costs of the water supply infrastructures. The open-source code of the WIZ platform engine enables constant improvements to be made to the system.

The WIZ project conducted an analysis of long-term management of drinking water, in a system where water management has been integrated into land use planning. The WIZ approach (in particular, WIZ4Planners) defined a decision process that integrates, firstly, the prediction model of the effects of climate change on the availability of water resources and, secondly, the spatial data provided by the municipalities involved in the demonstration of WIZ services. WIZ enables water authorities to prepare investment plans with a more complete picture and harmonised data characterising the water demands of an area.

As a result of the project, awareness of water management issues and participation in water-related activities has increased among citizens and businesses. The online platform offers a range of freely-available information on water resources, making possible a “participatory management” approach. Users can also contribute actively by reporting the perceived quality of drinking water and failures or other dysfunctions of service. This outcome contributed to the implementation of the Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information. Public involvement can put a greater focus on the value of drinking water and its quality, and encourages more sustainable patterns of consumption. Over 450 people in Italy and Spain have been engaged in the construction and validation of the requisites of WIZ. 10 pilot communities (their policy makers and their professionals and experts) currently use the WIZ4PLANNERS platform to manage authorization procedures and the relative requests for water service. Over 80 procedures have already been undertaken successfully through WIZ4PLANNERS (IT); 115 procedures have already been undertaken successfully through WIZ4PLANNERS Baiona (ES). WIZ has been acknowledged as a tool capable of improving integration between environmental policies and local territorial planning, decisional capacity and the settlement of conflicts. In Italy, its use is recommended by the Tuscan Water Authority (AIT) throughout the region. Every day, an average of about 90 citizens and/or enterprises consult the WIZ services in Italy and Spain.