I° Congresso Nazionale CUCS sulla Cooperazione Universitaria Pavia,17-18 Giugno 2009 WATER FACILITIES, EDUCATION AND FOSS4G SPREADING IN RWANDA Davide Righetti*, Diego Avesani*, Niccolò Da Ronco*, Ennio Zara*, Marco Ciolli**, Maurizio Righetti*, Chiara Sboarina*, Clara Tattoni*. Alfonso Vitti*, Paolo Zatelli*, Paolo Bertola* *Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile ed Ambientale, Università di Trento via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento, ITALY tel. +39-0461-882625 **email Marco.Ciolli@ing.unitn.it DICA, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Trento is currently working in the frame of an ACP EU Water Facility project concerning an area of north Rwanda with the partnership of MFLM (Movimento per la lotta contro la fame nel mondo di Lodi) and AVSI Milano. There are many problems related to both water quantity and quality in Rwanda, therefore an effective management of the existing water systems and a correct design of the future ones are extremely important to obtain sustainable results in a long term perspective. Some of the project's goals are to build new water supply systems, to build micro hydro-power plants and to carry out slope and river restoration in order to limit slope and river bank erosion. The project is also aimed to share with the Rwandan operators the knowledge about the present water management situation and to study together with them some new tools to improve it. In order to better the capabilities of Rwandan water operators to design and manage water distribution networks and related resources in the long run, an education program is also currently under development. In particular, the adoption of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) solutions is encouraged. Local partners like Districts, High schools (Politecnic of Byumba), Rwandan Universities (KIST and NUR), NGOs have been involved. These partners are providing data, local knowledge and field measures; they will receive courses regarding topics related to water management, soil erosion protection and FOSS for geographic data management. The design of two main water storage basins, where water is collected to produce energy, is complete, while the basins are currently being built. Different technical options are being examined in order to use the resulting energy in the most effective way. To help in the process, a first prototype interface between EPANET and GRASS GIS, two software useful to manage and design water supply systems, has been developed taking into account the results and the problems encountered in previous projects carried out by the research group in other African countries and areas. EPANET is widely used all over the world, but there are no FOSS available interfaces to and from a GIS system. The availability of such an instrument for a FOSS GIS can be important to foster the use of this tools, allowing water managers to be more effective and their work environmentally sustainable. In particular EPANET and GRASS may be very useful to support the control of water supply systems during the transition from the present Public water management regime to the new Public Private Partnership that is currently going on in Rwanda. The interface will be used also in the partners' education. Partners will participate as testers in order to spread the FOSS way of thinking, and in particular FOSS for geographic data management, use in their countries. 1 INTRODUCTION DICA, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Trento is currently working in the frame of an ACP EU Water Facility project concerning an area of north Rwanda with the partnership of MFLM (Movimento per la lotta contro la fame nel mondo di Lodi) and AVSI Milano. The current economic and environmental crisis that is currently affecting the whole world has highlighted the need to carry out sustainable interventions taking into account environmental issues. There are many problems related to both water quantity and quality in Rwanda, therefore an effective management of the existing water systems and a correct design of the future ones are extremely important to obtain sustainable results in a long term perspective. Some of the project's goals are to build new water supply systems, to build micro hydro-power plants and to carry out slope and river restoration in order to limit slope and river bank erosion. The project is also aimed to share with the Rwandan operators the knowledge about the present water management situation and to study together with them some new tools to improve it. In order to better the capabilities of Rwandan water operators to design and manage water distribution networks and related resources in the long run, an education program is also currently under development. In particular, the adoption of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) solutions is encouraged. Local partners like Districts, High schools (Politecnic of Byumba), Rwandan Universities (KIST and NUR), NGOs have been involved. These partners are providing data, local knowledge and field measures; they are receiving courses regarding topics related to water management, soil erosion protection and FOSS for geographic data management. The design of two main water storage basins, where water is collected to produce energy, is complete, while the basins are currently being built. Different