1. Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingenieurs, EMI – Rabat, Regional Water Centre of Maghreb, Morocco

EMI is the oldest School of engineers, established in 1957 in Morocco, and has given more importance to water resources from the beginning of its creation. Two departments are specialized in water resources, in addition to 6 Laboratories and teams. The Regional Water Centre of Maghreb and the Laboratory ‘Water Resources and Information Technologies’ are more experienced with high hydrological education for engineering and research in M.Sc. and PhD. Both Centre and Laboratory are coordinated by Prof. A. Larabi. The Lab also has more than 20 years of experience with hydrology and groundwater modelling of aquifer systems, including field investigations, data collection, interpretation, and modelling.

EMI was involved as full partner in many projects in the field of water resources with other Institutions in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Algeria, Tunisia, Middle East and USA through various projects (Avicenne1,Avicenne2, INCO/DC, FP5-6-7, NSF, bilateral projects, etc.). Several seminars and international conferences in water resources were organized. EMI was the organizer of several international conferences in water resources (1988, 1991, 1996, 1998, 2006, 207, 2011, 2013, and 2014) and especially, the first and 3rd International conference on seawater intrusion and coastal aquifers (Monitoring, Modelling and Management).

• The main participants are: Prof. A. Larabi (more than 30 years of experiences in hydrological modelling,awarded an internal prize on water, Management of coastal aquifers in 2006 and several distinctions); Prof.M. Souissi (Geostatistics and optimization), Dr. M. Faouzi (GIS and Groundwater hydrology) and Prof. R.Ellaia (optimization techniques), in addition to H. ElAsri (F), M. Khilad (F) and I. Boussella, all have MSc in Hydrology and GIS and are officially PhD students in the Regional water Centre of EMI.

1. BRGM (Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières), France 

BRGM is the French Geological Survey. Its mission is to conduct fundamental, applied, and technology based research on soil and subsurface. Its skills and expertise are widely recognized in the fields of geology, geophysics, hydrogeology, analytical chemistry, geochemistry, geo-microbiology, natural risks, control of environmental impacts, and subsurface information technology. It is a pioneer in research and development

on water resources management in France and overseas, playing a significant role in a number of actions at the National, European and International levels and is considered as the state delegated-expert on groundwater’s (see http://www.brgm.eu/activities/water/brgm-geosciences-for-water-management). In the

5th FWP, BRGM was involved as coordinator/partner in 36 projects dealing with integrated water management. In FP6/7 BRGM has contributed to more than 40 projects in topics related to various water management practices. 

• BRGM team includes Dr.-Ing. M.A. Sbaï as coordinator; Dr. N. Amraoui (F), and Dr. M. Rousseau (F).

1. The Centre for Advanced Studies, Research and Development Sardinia-CRS4, Italy 

CRS4 is a multi-disciplinary research centre founded in 1990 and was initially headed by the Nobel Prize in Physics Carlo Rubbia. The Environmental Sciences Research Program at CRS4 focused on the development of highly effective software applications to solve challenging environmental problems on high-end computing architectures. Our

main expertise is in the development of numerical models and their application to real world case-studies to support decisions in environmental resource management problems. Project activities include simulation and data analysis for problems related to soil and water contamination, surface and groundwater hydrology,extreme events, hydrogeological risk assessment, regional climatic and limited area meteorological

modelling. Major fields of applications include simulation and probabilistic forecast of extreme atmospheric events, climatic assessment, territorial planning and management of water and soil resources at the catchment/regional/continental scale.

CRS4 is equipped with high-end technological platforms: one of the major Italian HPC centres (47 Tflops of computing power and 5 Pbytes of storage capacity) directly linked to the first massive DNA Sequencing platform in Italy and a state-of-the-art Visual Computing Lab.

• Dr. Marino Marroccu: head of the Environmental Sciences branch of the Energy & Environment program. More than 15 years of experience: meteorological mesoscale ensemble prediction, climatic data modeling and analysis, involved in the CLIMB EU project, applying a regional climatic model to assess climate change impact on the hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean basin.
• Pierluigi Cau: M.Sc. in Hydraulic Engineering. Experiences: computational hydrology, GIS and development of innovative WEB ICT tools for the management of water and soil resources.

1. University of Padova (UNIPD), Italy

The Numerical Modelling (NM) group of UNIPD has a long-standing background in development and analysis of numerical models applied to groundwater hydrology, surface-subsurface water interaction, flow and transport modelling. NM has a strong experience in the participation and coordination of large scale projects. NM was the original developer of the CATHY (CATchment HYdrology) model that will be used within the current project. CATHY has been used in a number of hydrologic applications (EU projects CLIMB and GLOBAQUA) and is currently in use at several institutions worldwide, including the LEO (Land Evolution Observatories) at the Biosphere2 project run by the University of Arizona (USA), and the group of Duke University (USA).

• Mario PUTTI, BSc and PhD in Civil Engineering (California at Los Angeles), Professor at UNIPD. He was involved in several projects funded by national and international institutions (US-NSF, EU). Experience: development and analysis 3D models applied to the simulation of hydrologic processes applied to the solution PDEs. Recent interests include uncertainty quantification, ensemble data assimilation, and reduced order modelling, as well as nonlinear coupling of interacting processes characterized by different spatial and temporal scales.

• PIETRO TEATINI, Hydraulic Engineering, he was awarded “Paolo Gatto”, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, for the modelling of the aquifer system underlying the Venice Lagoon. His research interests concern the flow in confined/phreatic aquifer systems, development of numerical models for the simulation of these processes, the model application to real world problems, the execution of field experiments, and the management of survey networks to characterize their occurrence. He has been involved in national and international research projects (EU, ESA).

6. University of Annaba (UA), Algeria

UA  was chosen by the Ministry of HE as a pilot institution for the BSc-MSc-PhD system, and therefore was one of the 1st universities in DZ to move towards this new system. UA

has a long experience in teaching, national and international cooperation through different EU programmes. There is more exchange of students and teachers between UA, EMI and France. The UA department of Hydraulics, in collaboration with laboratories involved in water resources research, are leading projects in water. Msc & PhD School for water sciences and sustainable development are already implemented at UA in collaboration with industries, especially with Science-Technology dept. in water resources. UA has a national water centre that collaborates with the Maghreb regional water centre at EMI.

• The team include Prof. Larbi Djabri (hydrochemistry and hydrogeology), Prof. Hani Azzedine (GIS and Groundwater simulation), Prof. Hicham Chaffai (Hydrogeology) and Dr. Mohamed Cherif Djouamaa (geochemistry) and belongs to the National Water Centre and Laboratory ‘Ressources en Eau et Développement Durable’ coordinated by Prof. L. Djabri.

7. Institut National Agronomique de Tunisie (INAT), Tunisia

The ‘Institut National Agronomique de Tunisie’ is the oldest high school of engineers in Tunisia and his main activities are focussed on high education in engineering and research (MSc and PhD in Agricultural techniques such as Rural Techniques or Rural Engineering). The rural Engineering covers several themes: Hydraulics, Water Resources Management, Irrigation, Drainage, Hydrology, Hydrogeology, etc. In Parallel with high education activities, the institute (INAT) conducts research activities mainly devoted to Agricultural Techniques, with focus on water resources management in agriculture. Several research projects relating to these subjects are conducted and funded by International organisms in the framework of international cooperation network with other Universities in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Morocco, Algeria and Japan.

• The main scientists involved in the project will be Prof. Jamila Tarhouni (F) (Management of Lands and Forests), has more than 30 years of experience in water resources and modelling, especially in coastal aquifers. She is also the head of the Rural Engineering Department. She has participated as principal researcher in several national and international projects. 
• Other involved staff are: Prof. Nejla Tlaltli (F) (Hydroloy), Amira Ziadi (F) (Hydrogeology and geochemistry), Ines Laajili (F) (Rural engineering, water management) and Eng. Selma Etteieb (F) (GIS, modelling and Land management).