Applying the SMART project multidisciplinary integrated approaches has proved quite intriguing and beneficial. To begin with, the theme on water resource availability and management is very crucial to the area of study, i.e. around Tripoli city, the 2nd largest and coastal urban complex in Lebanon, covering the main river watershed, Abou Ali, in the surrounding. Indeed, the results would have an impact on three levels: social plus administrative, scientific plus spread of knowledge and economic.
At the social-administrative level, we were able to reach communities and agencies in the watershed with whom we interacted on the subject matter and supplied views on improvement of the water infrastructure.
We even had the opportunity to discuss the possibilities of water pricing as a future possibility contributing to control on water demand. The water authorities also had a good share of our efforts especially exposing the futuristic scenarios and their possible outcome, from which they decided to look deeper into the approach as an aid in their projected privatisation process and improving the water management. The innovative aspect was the integration of all water users on one hand and the holistic water-shed approach , on the other.
On the scientific front, the results are tremendous. Now we have a very significant database on the watershed, and it is digital. This is already available on the server of the GIS-based bureau of the Municipality of Tripoli, which supplies ready information to the different communities of the area. Moreover, the knowledge gained by the Lebanese team with the advanced water software is very valuable. It added new dimensions to both our research and applications. The interactions we had with colleague scientists from universities and NGOs has proven fruitful, where some are concerned with the outcome from a water resource management point of view, while others are more concerned with the quality aspects. This applies both to the fresh-water regime (Water Ware) on land, as well as that of the littoral (Telemac software). Certainly, we have used this added knowledge to publish some of the work contributing to the scientific community at large. This took place both in scientific journals and in meetings.
The previous description on social-administrative aspects already points out to a socio-economic potential outcome, namely, the improvement in water management, i.e. better use of the resource, better control on leak points, encouraging positive interaction among different stakeholders, and even the acceptance of the possibly coming water pricing regulations. There is significant water wastage in the way things are running now. The economic outcome of using the data generated from SMART, or indeed using the advanced softwares that have generated these data and showed the future projections, e.g. what are the impacts of taking now steps that will relieve the situation, are considerable. The water authorities should be aware of the value of applying those approaches.