With the Flemish partnership, which co-finances the MYP IV, an exchange session was organized with the IMDC office with a view to developing a 3D digital hydrogeological model as a decision-making tool to be proposed to the partner municipalities concerned by the MYP IV project. Projections on the availability of water resources according to their use, population growth and climate change could be made using the “model”. It could be also used to assess the risks, anticipate the depletion of the resource and also anticipate alternative solutions.
About twenty people representing the National Water Institute (INE), the Research Institute for Development (IRD), the Universities of Parakou and Abomey Calavi, the General Directorate for Water (DG-Water), the IMDC, Protos and CWP-Benin attended the meeting. The exchanges that followed communications clarified the objectives of the model and the input data.
This is the use of a flexible model for the representation of hydrogeological layers that should make it possible to compare recharge with groundwater mobilization. The tool's flexibility allows the integration of dynamic climate data and any other parameter deemed relevant. Also, the exchanges gave the opportunity to each actor to contribute on the availability of the complementary data for the design of the model.
Four sites were visited to meet with the communities. This allowed to the mission to formulate hypotheses that explain the phenomenon of artesian wells observed at the said sites.
the mission recommended that:
- CWP-Benin makes advocacy with the administrative authorities of the water sector (Ministry and DG-Water) for the financing of the acquisition and installation of measuring instruments, the collection, processing and storage of water resources monitoring data in Benin;
- the 3D digital model is hosted in a structure capable of periodically updating and analyzing the monitoring data of the captive aquifers in the project area in order to help good water resources management.