SMART-WADI 9SMART WATER decisions for Iran Short general project overviewIran faces a major challenge to meet increasing water demands and to deal with competing water use for agriculture and cities. Water conflicts are likely to increase even further in the future due to population growth and climate change. Water demand has increased mostly for agriculture, putting already huge pressure on the relationships between the rural and the urban areas. The Mashhad basin, where Mashhad city is located, the 2nd largest city in Iran, is an important economic hub in terms of tourism and industry, but its economic growth is threatened seriously by water shortages and uncontrolled groundwater usage. The situation is already critical, and the government is considering drastic infrastructural measures including desalination and inter-basin water transfers.But, besides water supply-increasing measures, there is an urgent need to reduce water demands, especially for agriculture, by making systems more efficient and productive. In Mashhad basin there is a huge scope to increase water productivity: producing more with less water. For this, irrigators need to have access to better information on crop water productivity, water stress and measures to boost water productivity.This project targets irrigators and aims at delivering them a solution providing up-to-date information on water productivity and near-real time advice on their irrigation and farm water application. The solution combines the latest technology developed by knowledge partner IHE on water productivity mapping based on high-resolution satellite imagery for measuring consumptive water use, with ultra-resolution imagery based on Flying Sensors to assess crop performance. By incorporating this information in semi-real time in a crop water productivity model, yield gaps can be analysed and the scope for enhancing agricultural practices can be assessed. This information will then be delivered together with recommendations on irrigation best practices and timing to increase WP, to the farmer by means of an online portal and/or mobile app.For irrigation advisory services to be adopted successfully, demonstration and pilot projects are crucial. However, these projects are costly and require careful pre-assessment of risks and opportunities. The current subsidy is requested for assessing the viability and feasibility (technical, market-wise and political/legal) of the proposed solution, and will result in a go/no-go for a possible successive pilot demonstration project.What are the results of the projectThe technical feasibility of the concept was proven in Iran but can be applied in any other country, basin, or farm around the world.In Iran, even though local interest and user demand for our three-source information service proved to be high, the expectation for further testing, validation and potential upscaling is limited due to political instability and economic recession. Neighbouring countries have better opportunities.Even though local stakeholders showed interest in our services and willingness to pay, our consortium determined high risks in continuing efforts in Iran for a pilot implementation. Main risks include the legal and political barriers in using flying sensors (drones) due to formalities to get flight permissions. These formalities are worsened due to increasing political and economic instability since the beginning of 2019, which by they own represent a risk for further testing and demonstrating the service, and ambitions to upscale the service.