Addressing climate change preparedness from a smart water perspective Alenka Guček *, Joao Pita Costa ** ***, M.Besher Massri * ** *******, João Santos Costa *, Maurizio Rossi ****, Ignacio Casals del Busto *****, Iulian Mocanu ****** * Institute Jozef Stefan, Slovenia, ** IRCAI, Slovenia, *** Quintelligence, Slovenia, **** Ville de Carouge, Switzerland, ***** Aguas de Alicante, Spain, ****** Apa Braila, Romania, ******* Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School ABSTRACT Observing the world on a global scale can help us understand better the role of water and water resource management utilities in a climate change context that engage us all. The usage of machine learning algorithms on open data measurements and statistical indicators can help us understand the behavioral changes in seasons and better prepare. These are complemented by powerful text mining algorithms that mine worldwide news, social media, published research and patented innovation towards best practices from success stories. In this paper, we propose a data-driven global observatory that puts together the different perspectives of media, science, statistics and sensing over heterogeneous data sources and text mining algorithms. We also discuss the implementation of this global observatory in the context of epidemic intelligence, monitoring the impact of climate change, and the value of this global solution in local contexts and priorities. CCS CONCEPTS • Real-time systems • Data management systems • Life and medical science KEYWORDS Climate Change Preparedness, Data-driven Decision-making, Water Resource Management, Smart Water, Observatory, Water Digital Twin, Deep Learning, Text Mining, Interactive Data Visualization 1 Introduction In the present decade, Climate Change has become positioned as one of the world priorities, a global problem with great socio-economic impact. It has been in the focus of European and Worldwide strategies, rapidly changing priorities towards sustainability and environmental efficiency, transversely to most domains of action. The European Commission’s Green Deal [5] is a good example of this, aiming for a climate neutral Europe in 2050, and boosting the economy through green technology over a new framework to understand and position water resource management in the context of the challenges of tomorrow [1]. In the context of the NAIADES project [3] we repurpose and customize the NAIADES Water Observatory, adding a measurements dimension to its text mining capabilities to allow for forecasts on, e.g., water level and temperature to complete the perspective on the impact of climate change for the preparedness both of water management utilities and users as in, e.g., smart agriculture. This will improve the climate change preparedness of water resource management facilities and local authorities in a global context, in particular in European regions where water scarcity or extreme weather events are predicted. The water-related climate change topics that we are already addressing include, e.g., water reuse, wastewater management, saline intrusion and groundwater contamination. In this paper we will discuss our contribution to this cause, through the NAIADES Water Observatory (accessible at naiades.ijs.si) [12], focusing on water-related aspects, allowing the user to explore a combination of perspectives offered over layers of information sourced in statistics, historical measurements, multilingual news and social media to published science, weather models and indicators. It is also being used in the context of extreme weather events to analyze worldwide trends and best practices in water topics like, e.g., floods, landslide, and contamination [9], building business intelligence from the available open data in combination with data streams [11]. The NAIADES Water Observatory is not only contributing to the improvement of European sustainability in water-related activities and business intelligence but it is also providing an active role to local actors in improving together with municipalities and water resource management utilities the efficient use of resources [13]. This local perspective is especially important for providing information at the local granularity, which enables communities or municipalities to build solutions that are relevant for their specific cases.