Euro-Mediterranean Journal for Environmental Integration - Call for Paper
Special Issue
Water 4.0: Toward Water Mitigation and Water Restoration in the Mediterranean/MENA Region
Scope:
Freshwater is the most essential natural resource; however, its imbalanced distribution among the countries creates water shortage problems in many regions of the world. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the Mediterranean region includes about 17 countries below the water poverty line, as announced by the United Nations. Although the Mediterranean/MENA region occupies six percent of the world's population, it has only one percent of the world's freshwater resources. Accordingly, several organizations worldwide have classified the Mediterranean/MENA as the most water-scarce region in the world.
Recently, the conventional methods of sustainable water resources management have failed to narrow the water shortage gab or the gap between demand and supply. Hence, shareholders, policy planners, decision-makers, researchers, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) developers should interact to generate urgent actions that can tackle the water scarcity problems facing the Mediterranean/MENA region. Innovative strategies should also integrate advanced technologies, automation methodologies and Internet of Things (IoT) to solve the water scarcity issues in terms of both quantity and quality.
The term “Water 4.0” has been recently established to express the new water network generations that can empower the public to connect the recently developed technologies with the traditional water industry. The “Water 4.0” concept considers a new generation of water industry that establishes huge facilities to overcome and mitigate the water shortage issues. Accordingly, “Water 4.0” can offer recent technological advancement for the Mediterranean/MENA region to improve the water use efficiency, reduce the wastewater quantities, improve quality of treated wastewater for further use, and increase the water supply and reduce the water demand by controlling the losses in all water systems. As demand for freshwater is exponentially growing along with the dwindling of global water supplies, understanding the future of desalination in the MENA region has become urgently required. Combining the established with emerging desalination technologies can improve the entire desalination systems to utilize less energy and produce more freshwater. Desalination driven by renewable energy resources seems to be an outstanding choice for the MENA countries to acquire both freshwater and electricity. In addition, reusable water techniques have the potential to improve the use of treated domestic and industrial wastewater for generating ample supplies of freshwater.
This Special Issue covers the Water 4.0 objectives and aspects to push future water research and water resources investigations for developing low-cost water systems with improved application efficiencies. This landmark Issue attempts to reduce the gap between the demand and the supply in order to save life in the MENA and the Mediterranean region against the water scarcity challenges. For everyone who cares about reliable, clean, and abundant water in the MENA and the Mediterranean region, this Special Issue will be essential reading.
Highlights:
The Special Issue aims at presenting high-quality research studies on the Mediterranean/MENA region (from countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea and their direct neighbors) and to cover the following topics (but not limited to):
- Overview of available advanced technologies to increase the efficiency and productivity of the water industry.
- Improvement of water use efficiency using modern irrigation systems and ICT.
- Enhancement of water quality to develop more freshwater using recently developed low-cost techniques.
- Groundwater sustainability and automated monitoring techniques.
- Low-cost desalination technologies to produce more water for irrigation.
- Improvement of Water Resources management and development of new best practices strategies based on advanced technologies and ICT.
- Utilization of advanced and available technologies and new materials as nanoparticles to develop Nonconventional Water Resources.
- Use of modern technologies and satellite data to minimize the water scarcity, optimizing it in planning water infrastructures for water services and water industry.
- Recent research findings on how technologies help to solve the water industry’s challenges like ageing infrastructures & assist maintenance, and managing energy costs through renewables.
- Recent research findings on how IoT approach be applied for urbanization, sewer spillage risks, flooding, sustainable energy supply and climate change leading to smart water industry.
- Recent research findings on how Big data, crowed-sourced observations and cloud computing could be used to achieving a better understanding of water sustainability and thus, more efficient water resources management.
- Contribution of modern and advanced technologies in minimizing the impacts of the water scarcity on citizens’ economic and social activities.
Deadlines and key dates:
Full manuscript submission deadline: 30 March 2021
Notification of Acceptance: 90 days after submission date
Publishing Date of the issue: 30 September 2021 (*)
(*) Each accepted paper will be published online and indexed in the Web of Science shortly after the acceptance date without waiting for building the full special issue.
The submission link: https://www.editorialmanager.com/emje/default.aspx (this opens in a new tab)
Submission and Evaluation:
Interested authors can submit on or before the deadline. All papers will be evaluated carefully through a double-blind peer-review process. Accepted papers will be published immediately and indexed in the Web of Science without waiting for building the full special issue.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submitting manuscripts are available on the journal’s “Submission Guidelines” page. In particular, authors should carefully read the section “Instructions for Authors / Before Online Submission” on this link (this opens in a new tab).
Guest Editors:
Abdelazim M. Negm (Handling Editor)
Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt
E-mail: amnegm85@yahoo.com (this opens in a new tab), amnegm@zu.edu.eg (this opens in a new tab)
Cell Phone: +20 1005735345
Andrea Scozzari
Institute of Information Science and Technologies National Research Council of Italy, Pisa, Italy
E-mail: andscozzari@gmail.com (this opens in a new tab), a.scozzari@isti.cnr.it (this opens in a new tab), andrea.scozzari@isti.cnr.it (this opens in a new tab)
Cell Phone: +39 3809003709
Francesco Soldovieri
Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment, CNR-IREA, Italy
E-mail: soldovieri.f@irea.cnr.It (this opens in a new tab)
El-Sayed E. Omran
Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt
And: Dean of Institute of African Research and Studies and Nile Basin Countries, Aswan University, Aswan, Egypt
E-mail: ee.omran@gmail.com (this opens in a new tab)
Mustafa El-Rawy
Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Minia, Egypt
And: College of Engineering, Shaqra University, Dawadmi, Ar Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
E-mail: mustafa.elrawy@mu.edu.eg (this opens in a new tab), mustafaelrawy@gmail.com (this opens in a new tab)
Cell Phone: +966 530964621
Mahmoud Nasr
Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt
E-mail: mahmmoudsaid@gmail.com (this opens in a new tab), mahmoud-nasr@alexu.edu.eg (this opens in a new tab)
Cell Phone: +20 10063 90 400
Mohamed Eltarabily
Faculty of Engineering, Port Said University, Port Said, Egypt
And: University of California, Division of Agricultural and Natural Resources, UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Centre, California, USA
E-mail: meltarabily@ucdavis.edu (this opens in a new tab), eng_m_trabily@eng.psu.edu.eg (this opens in a new tab)
Tel (office): +1 (559) 646-6505
Cell Phone: +1 (559) 574-0947