Imagine a groundwater manager sitting in front of the computer, with a window open to a website where questions about the response of the aquifer to a reduction of infiltration in a dry year could be asked and answered almost instantly. Imagine a farmer in need of introducing a new fertilizer who could query the same website and know the impact that a given load will have on groundwater quality. Imagine a hydrogeologist building a numerical model to analyse the impact of some dewatering wells in need of historical data about the evolution of piezometric levels in the aquifer and getting those data online. Imagine a citizen, any citizen, concerned with climate change and interested in the evolution of groundwater reserves in the region and obtaining this information from the cloud. Imagine innovative sustainable management of groundwater in the MED. Stop imagining because this is InTheMED, a project aimed at providing the most innovative decision support system tools to be demonstrated and applied in selected case studies around the Mediterranean; a project also aimed at fostering the sharing of data, methods, and results, making sharing the rule rather than the exception. Tools solidly founded in the most advanced system-process and socio-economic models, and the participatory involvement of all stakeholders, from water authorities to end users, from hydrogeology experts to total system analysts. Imagining InTheMED is imagining a better understanding of groundwater, better groundwater resilience, a new way of modelling, management and remediation, and a new manner of understanding decision support systems, always aimed at ensuring groundwater sustainability in water-stressed areas in the Mediterranean.
