Expected start date:

2017/04/03

Expected end date:

2019/03/31

Institute:

UNU-FLORES

Project Status:

Ongoing

Project Type:

Research

Project Manager :

Stephan Hülsmann

The realisation of the Water-Soil-Waste-Nexus Approach requires a holistic understanding of the interlinkage of all related environmental processes, while also taking into consideration global change and socioeconomic aspects. Exploring these interlinkages and advancing an integrated management approach requires integrated modelling tools. However, no single modelling tool is available or conceivable that would cover all processes, interactions, and drivers related to water, soil, and waste resources. Instead, a vast number of models are available and in use dealing with specific environmental processes related to water, soil, and waste at varying degrees of detail, covering certain spatial and temporal scales, and applying different mathematical process-describing relationships. To address a specific nexus-oriented research question or management issue, instead of developing an appropriate modelling tool from scratch, it should be more efficient and feasible to make use of available tools and modify or couple them as required. To make use of existing tools and facilitate the selection of the most appropriate (set of) tool(s) a comprehensive database of models related to the management of water, soil, and waste, the Nexus Tools Platform (NTP), has been developed.

This project aims at further advancing and promoting the NTP for inter-model comparison of existing modelling tools. The project shall result in an updated version of NTP, containing an extended set of modelling tools as well as new features to improve usability. The project shall also increase awareness and expand the level of external support (input and updates) and the integration of NTP in the Nexus Observatory.

NTP is available at https://data.flores.unu.edu/projects/ntp