SIRIUS has identified several horizontal issues which cut across all the research and development activities of the Project. In each of these areas, the SIRIUS consortium has unanimously adopted an overarching policy and appointed a horizontal issues manager to oversee the development of the appropriate mechanisms to make sure that the project and the consortium follow a coherent approach.

Ethical issues:

The tools developed by SIRIUS are intended to benefit all stakeholders, but it is recognized that they could potentially reinforce social inequalities if used inappropriately. To guard against this, the project consortium continuously reviews the application of the project tools and their transfer to third parties to ensure compatibility with relevant European Union rural development and international cooperation goals.

Gender mainstreaming: 

Gender issues are relevant in SIRIUS in several ways, all of which are addressed in the Gender Action Plan. Water management and Information and Communication Technologies have a significant gender dimension. Read more

SIRIUS addresses this by actively pursuing gender mainstreaming in all technical workpackages. The Gender Action Plan also provides the overall gender equality approach of the project and the initial guidelines of how to achieve an effective gender balance through positive actions.

In particular, the project will promote the UN and EU guiding principles on gender equality in every aspect of its application.  This means that the consortium will address the gender imbalance that is currently prevailing in the research world of the academia with actions that show an effective increase of women researchers. At the same time it will also ensure that rural women in the case study areas will contribute to the research process in the stakeholder workshops and also benefit from the use of new technologies through training.

The Gender Working Group has been constituted. Its composition reflects a careful balance between women and men, technical disciplines, and pilot areas.

Quality and environmental management: 

The SIRIUS consortium has a policy of continuous improvement of the quality of the outputs of the project and the continuous reduction of the environmental impacts of the project activities. The project Quality and Environmental Management System is based on a simplified version of ISO 9001 and 14001 standards. All project outputs are subject to internal peer review whilst quality and environmental impact are reviewed annually.

Training and education: 

SIRIUS provides an opportunity to intensify the already ongoing exchange of students and scientists, in particular through a special mechanism for exchange of personnel. South-south exchange is especially encouraged. In the context of workpackages WP1, WP7, WP8 strategies for developing a training and education program will be outlined, possibly including new university curricula, aiming at forming a new generation of interdisciplinary water managers.

Knowledge management: 

The approach follows the principles and techniques of Organic Knowledge Management. The coordinator acts to provide space, structures and opportunities for identifying and consolidating knowledge obtained through the project and to provide the incentives to encourage those patterns that emerge during the project that benefit the learning process.

]]> https://sirius-gmes.es/workpackages/ Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:39:09 +0000 https://sirius-gmes.es/?page_id=61 Workpackages

The backbone of the downstream service stimulation and validation activities will be a set of eight Case Studies, to be performed in selected pilot areas in Spain, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Egypt, India, Mexico, and Brazil (abbreviated in the following as ES, IT, RO, TR, EG, IN, MX, and BR, respectively). These Cases have been selected according to the diversity of conditions (source of water, technical and management skills, etc.) across the European and Southern Mediterranean, Asia, and Latin America and to the availability of data, information, and knowledge from previous or ongoing activities. The project’s focus on eight different pilot areas creates a matrix-like structure with the same overall objectives and approaches applied in these different environments. The key characteristics of each pilot area will result in different aspects of the activities being emphasised in each.

To plan and manage the project, Sirius is structured in management activities(one WP: WP9) and thematic activities(8 WPs: WP1- WP8). The project objectives are mapped onto the research activities of the workplan in an iterative way:

WP1 (“User community”)To prepare the service environment by strengthening the participatory process which is necessary for efficient and effective irrigation water resources management and by jointly developing users’ requirements portfolios that lead to sustainable future community agreements for irrigation farming practices assisted by GMES services in each pilot area, based on cooperation of all stakeholders.

WP2 (“Technical system and user interface”)To strengthen the current version (global, local, portable modes) of the online System of Participatory Information, Decision-support, and Expert knowledge in Riverbasin management (SPIDER) developed in PLEIADeS in two ways: placing it robustly within the overall framework of the GMES SDI, whilst ensuring it is operational on the ground with the network of local ppgis** communities.

WP3 (“Portfolio”)To further develop, validate, and consolidate the product generation algorithms for the SIRUS portfolio and to operationalize them as far as possible while maintaining user control procedures where needed. This includes integrating data from all sources (EO, non-EO, model).

WP4 (“Portfolio production line”)To set up and implement the SIRIUS portfolio production line, including purpose-oriented quality control, merging data streams from EO (“virtual constellation” concept), non-EO (insitu, surveys), and models. To generate products for participatory service assessment with users during one growing season.

WP5 (“Service Provider community”) To develop and employ a framework of business strategies to stimulate operative and sustainable SIRIUS service activities capable of providing benefits to the user community of water resources management

WP6 (“Participatory multi-stakeholder service assessment”)To guide the local user community in a participatory multi-stakeholder process through the set up, test implementation, training, and evaluation of the SIRIUS services in representative pilot cases..

WP7 (“Sustainable implementation”)To evaluate/assess the social, political, cultural, and economic environment for the sustainable implementation of the SIRIUS Service in a holistic/systemic framework (covering governance, policy, community-building, technical infrastructures, funding, and training) and to create the necessary/corresponding roadmaps

WP8 (“Communication”)To disseminate the project activities and results in creative ways and to raise awareness on the potential benefits of GMES for sustainable irrigation and food production in the wider community.

The overall goal of SIRIUS is

To establish innovative and new GMES service capacities for the irrigation water management user community with the vision of bridging and integrating sustainable food production with fair economic competitiveness, and within wise water governance scenarios that prevent water conflicts in water-scarce areas.

This overall goal will be achieved through a series of practical objectives; we define a set of four specific objectives:

1 Foundations of user community

To strengthen the user community by setting-up and maintaining a participatory process in all pilot areas, centered on the people participatory GIS (ppgis) concept.

2 GMES-assisted toolsets

To develop GMES-assisted pre-operational tools and services for effective and efficient irrigation water management and river-basin governance.

3 Validated service scenarios

To validate and implement the services in a set of pilots (representative for wide range of irrigated agriculture) and prepare their sustainable operation.

4 Business community and sustainable implementation Expected outcome

To initiate a network of small local service provider businesses within the context of boosting local economies (as a means to improve European competitiveness and sustainability). Integrating existing spin-offs, SMEs, NGOs and stimulating new ones by creating favorable conditions and an enabling environment.