Saudi Water Academy
Connecting Waterpeople

You are here

H2020: water, climate, agriculture & irrigation

About the blog

Ignasi Servià Goixart
@iservia is Ignasi Servià, agronomist who has participated in important Irrigation / Rural Development projects. My experience in GIS has allowed me to help an Agricultural Services company in Precision Agriculture issues during the last 2 years
  • H2020: water, climate, agriculture & irrigation

The reasons for this post:

1. Year 2020

It's been a couple of weeks of this year 2020. When I made the Christmas greeting I made an image that was a play on words between the water formula (H20) and the year we started (2020)


Fig. 1 Image of the year 2020

2. Post about Horizon 2020

In the month of December I wrote a post about LIFE projects. In this post I analyzed how the communication of some LIFE projects were. It seemed to me that the right thing was to write a post also for the H2020 projects.

In this I will not present metrics on social networks, although the behavior is very similar.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.

Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness.

Seen as a means to drive economic growth and create jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the Members of the European Parliament. They agreed that research is an investment in our future and so put it at the heart of the EU’s blueprint for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs.

By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is helping to achieve this with its emphasis on excellent science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The goal is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.

Horizon 2020 is open to everyone, with a simple structure that reduces red tape and time so participants can focus on what is really important. This approach makes sure new projects get off the ground quickly – and achieve results faster.

The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation will be complemented by further measures to complete and further develop the European Research Area. These measures will aim at breaking down barriers to create a genuine single market for knowledge, research and innovation.


Fig. 2 Horizon 2020 image.

3. #EUGreenDeal.

Yesterday I saw on Twitter this tweet of Horizon 2020 where it was explained:

Research and innovation play a crucial role in driving and navigating the transitions to a climate-neutral

The new €1 billion #H2020 call on #ClimateAction will kick-start big changes! Get ready for #EUGreenDeal impact

It was hoped that the policies of the fight against climate change will be extended across the EU policies.


Fig. 3. Tweet 16/1/2020 #EUGreenDeal

4. IaguaMagazine #25 Europe. Global Reference in Governance.

Last December iAgua presented the iAgua magazine number 25, with the title Europe. Global Reference in Governance. Previously, the magazine had focused on national or Latin American content, but the launch of Smart Water Magazine just 1 year ago has served to start sharing content from Europe.

Congratulations team for your first anniversary of Smart Water Magazine!!

Data analyzed

To make this post I downloaded the Excel file with information on 26.500 H2020 projects.

Variables analyzed:

  • STARYEAR ENDYEAR. Years of beginning and completion of the projects carried out.
  • Total Cost. Total cost of the project.
  • Keywords in the title: Water, Climate, Agriculture & Irrigation.

It is clear that this is a very important volume of projects, and therefore I wanted to perform a rigorous but automatic analysis of the data.

The table also contains the column of project objectives. But I have considered that the objectives could speak of these words, without being the core of the project.

I recognize that there are projects on irrigation, and that they have not been included in these classes. This is a first approach in the form of a post, it is not a detailed study.

It is possible that some project accumulates more than one keyword in its title. For example the GALNIMBUS Project: “Disruptive cloud-based irrigation controller to optimize water use efficiency in agriculture, acumula Irrigation, Water and Agriculture”.


Fig. 4. Update date 10/12/2019 Horizon 2020 projects

1. Dimension of the projects

Ranges have been set for the total cost of projects, from projects of less than € 100,000 to projects of more than € 100 million.

  • The range that accumulates a greater number of projects and a greater investment is between € 1 and € 5 million.
  • The project with the highest budget is “Implementation of activities described in the Roadmap to Fusion during Horizon 2020 through a Joint program of the members of the EUROfusion consortium”, 6 years.

Table 1. Cumulative Cost, and number of projects for different ranges of total cost.

2. Keywords for year

In the following table I present the cost accumulated by the start / end years of the projects and by the 4 keywords in the project title.


Table 2. Accumulated Costs by start / end years and keywords

  •   The percentage of H2020 projects with the keywords in their title, stands at 1,67% for water, 1,30% for climate, 0,47% for agriculture and only 0,04% for irrigation.

    - These percentages do not correspond to the fact that the use of water for food production represents 70% globally. In a climate change scenario, irrigation should increasingly have a greater distribution in Europe.

    - The projects with the word water had a higher accumulated budget, but in 2019 more projects were started with the word climate than water.


Fig. 5. Cost accumulated by start / end years and keywords

3. Start / End of projects

The figure shows how projects are started every year for a budget of about €10,000 million. As usual, the curves between the beginning and the end of the project are displaced, which in general we could say about 4 years.


Fig. 6. Distribution of the accumulated cost by start / end year.

Irrigation projects

I would like to end this post with a list of H2020 projects that have the keyword irrigation in their title.

Highlight the MASLOWATEN project, which accumulates 23% of H2020 projects with the keyword Irrigation. From this H2020 project I wrote a water post in December 2017.

List of projects:

Revotree : An automated, machine learning, IoT agronomic platform for optimal irrigation, pesticide and fertilizer utilization at farms.

HPGen : On-site Hydrogen Peroxide Generator for effective, safe and sustainable irrigation water treatment

TOXICROP : Cyanotoxins in Irrigation Waters: Surveillance, Risk Assessment, and Innovative Remediation proposals

HyPump : Enabling Sustainable Irrigation through Hydro-Powered Pumps for Canals

HydSOS : Irrigation water saving by replacing the traditional irrigation system by an Adjusted Regulated Deficit Irrigation one

AQUA4D : AQUA4D, for an efficient use of irrigation water

StemSense : A precise irrigation monitoring system to provide an accurate measurement of water status in crops

AQUA4D : AQUA4D - For an efficient use of irrigation water

RAINOLVE : Accurate irrigation controller with multi-sensoring and interactive cloud-based platform to evaluate real plant needs and save up to 80% of water

sunlight2.0 : Highly efficient, solar-powered irrigation pump

WoundRinse : Preventing Chronic wound infections with a novel, antibiotic Wound Irrigation Solution; relieving patients from pain, risk of amputations and ensuring large cost savings for all Healthcare Systems.

PROTECTOR : Improving resource efficiency through a protective film for hose reel irrigation

Green-DROP : Precise subarea specific irrigation and fertilization system

SIZE : The role of size in the sustainability of irrigation systems

BRIOAGRO : Intelligent low-cost, scalable, adaptive ecosystem for intelligent irrigation and fertilization ensuring high performance and quality crops

PROTECTOR : Improving resource efficiency through a protective film for hose reel irrigation

AGRI-DRONE : Unique radar-drone used for subsurface water detection for precision agricultural irrigation

RAINOLVE : Accurate irrigation controller with multi-sensoring and interactive cloud-based platform to evaluate real plant needs and save up to 80% of water

HyPump : Enabling Sustainable Irrigation through Hydro-Powered Pump for Canals

StemSense : A precise irrigation sensor system to provide an accurate indication of water status in crops and deliver increased yields to farmers

IRRISAVE : Smart Irrigation Control System with 40% Savings in Water for Universal Use

SMART Fertigation : Subarea specific irrigation system for pivot- and linear fertigation techniques (SMART Fertigation)

MASLOWATEN : MArket uptake of an innovative irrigation Solution based on LOW WATer-ENergy consumption

REC : Root zone soil moisture Estimates at the daily and agricultural parcel scales for Crop irrigation management and water use impact – a multi-sensor remote sensing approach

GALNIMBUS : Disruptive cloud-based irrigation controller to optimize water use efficiency in agriculture


Table. 3. Main characteristics of H2020 projects with the Keyword Irrigation.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Topics of interest

The data provided will be treated by iAgua Conocimiento, SL for the purpose of sending emails with updated information and occasionally on products and / or services of interest. For this we need you to check the following box to grant your consent. Remember that at any time you can exercise your rights of access, rectification and elimination of this data. You can consult all the additional and detailed information about Data Protection.