The objective of Pilot Project 7 is to improve coordination among river, maritime, and environmental authorities for the integrated management of estuaries, thereby achieving the effective implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Water Quality Directive for the regulation of discharges.
In both estuaries, governance will be improved through the integration of environmental, hydrological, hydraulic, climatic, port management, and navigation data sources to enhance inter-administrative coordination, multi-level governance, and collaboration among scientific, sectoral, and territorial administration institutions.
In the Gironde estuary, the SMIDDEST project, the Port of Bordeaux, and the University of Limoges will further develop the Digital Twin created by the Port of Bordeaux as a key tool for multi-level estuary governance. They will also acquire and process new databases to address the combined challenges of managing pollutants and excess sediment.
The scope of the work will sometimes extend beyond the estuary itself, encompassing the Garonne and Dordogne river basins, as these are the source of the sediment and pollutant problems affecting the confluence of these two rivers in the Gironde estuary.
To improve governance, key stakeholders in the estuary will be given access to the Digital Twin through dashboards tailored to their needs and training.
In the case of the Guadalquivir estuary, water quality monitoring will be carried out, led by the University of Limoges and Yuntas, under the supervision of the Guadalquivir River Basin Authority and with the support of the Andalusian Ministry of Sustainability and Environment. Both institutions will contribute historical series of studies that will be combined to provide an overview of the impact of sediments in estuaries, their evolution, and the short-term outlook resulting from the effects of RIVERS-REST.