During the 12^th and 13^th of May, the kick-off meeting of the BRIGAID project took place at the Technical University of Delft (Netherlands). This EU-Horizon2020 project supports those innovations which aim to reduce the impacts of floods, droughts and extreme weather events. The BRIGAID’s mission is to turn already existing prototypes into market-ready products. This is not only done by actually improving innovations, but also by developing methods to assess their effectiveness and make innovations fit with organizational needs of end-users. The project covers technical as well as non-technical and eco-systems based innovations. Early involvement of end users is key to successful innovation.

FutureWater will have an important role in BRIGAID through the coordination of the Work Package on “Innovations for Droughts”, but also developing and testing two drought-based solutions: a) a drought monitoring and forescasting system based on the combination of satellite data, seasonal climate forescasts, and water allocation modelling tools, and b) a Decision Support System for the smart agricultural water management based on hyperspatial information from flying sensors (UAVs), agromodeling tools and web-mapping technologies.

BRIGAID welcomes innovators from outside the project to participate. As a unique and innovative element, micro-funding of innovations is available for testing and improvements of these innovations. Please contact with Sergio Contreras for more details about BRIGAID.