Georgia and Azerbaijan: Groundwater monitoring

CAE returns to the Caucasus, winning a tender for the construction of a groundwater monitoring system in 6 locations between Georgia and Azerbaijan.

CAE has won a tender for the construction of a groundwater monitoring system in 6 locations between Georgia and Azerbaijan, which will be carried out with the support of Hydrodiagnostic, a consolidated partner.

The work is part of the UNDP GEF Kura Project "Advancing Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) throughout the Kura river basin through implementation of agreed national and transnational actions and plans". The Strategic Action Plan (SAP) for the Kura river basin is based on four objectives which consist in achieving:

• sustainable use of water resources to guarantee access to water and preserve eco-systemic services;

• access to clean water for present and future generations and support for ecosystems functions in the Kura river basin;

• maintain the status of ecosystem under which essential environmental and socio-economic services are sustainably provided in the Kura river basin;

• mitigation of negative impacts deriving from floods and climate change on infrastructures, riparian ecosystems and communities.

To achieve these goals, Georgia and Azerbaijan will, among other things, need to "Improve the use of science for governance by strengthening monitoring, information management and data analysis systems for IWRM". This will increase safety applied to water/food/energy/ecosystem, as well as adaptation to climate change, including combined uses of groundwater and surface water.

To do so, a better assessment of the geographical distribution of groundwater and surface water and seasonal fluctuations will be needed; for this reason, a special working group has suggested to install a groundwater monitoring system in the Alazani (Ganik) –Iori basin.

The above-mentioned monitoring system will be used as a pilot to test the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of this technology in groundwater management. Two experts from each of the involved countries have selected the most suitable locations for the implementation of this monitoring system, which will consist of:

• 6 locations (3 per country) equipped with a Mhaster datalogger, a transmission system, a solar panel and a battery, as well as monitoring sensors such as:

o flow measurement sensors;

o pressure water level sensors;

o water temperature sensors;

o total dissolved solids (TDS) meters;

o electrical water conductivity meters;

o PH measuring sensors.

• 2 workstations (1 per country) with data collection and analysis software.

Two training days are also planned for 8 representatives of the groundwater management authorities of both countries; the training will focus on the functioning of the proposed system and its maintenance activities.