SIRENA
- PROJECTS
- Jul 1
- 2 min read
Streamlining Nature-Based Solutions for resilient and sustainable water management in the Mediterranean region
Duration: 1 June 2026 – 31 May 2029 (36 months)
Funding programme: PRIMA (Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area)
Project budget: €2,854,276.25
SEL NTUA budget: €504,375.00
Coordinator: SEL NTUA
SEL NTUA role: Project Coordinator, Demo Leader
Project website: www.sirena-prima.eu
SIRENA SUMMARY AND OBJECTIVES
SIRENA accelerates the large-scale deployment and mainstreaming of NbS to tackle the Mediterranean's most pressing water challenges, including drought, floods, water scarcity and water quality degradation. It demonstrates, monitors and upscales NBS across six WaterMED Labs organised into three cross-border Hubs, each pairing an EU "Origin Lab" with a North-African "Implementation Lab" facing similar challenges, so that proven solutions can be transferred and reapplied across contexts.
The work spans four pillars: nature-based systems for water resilience, participatory capacity-building and governance, enabling policy and a nature-positive economy, and digital tools including AI-based WEFE-Nexus modelling. All outcomes converge into the Mediterranean Water Resilience Framework, a replicable, multi-sectoral decision-support blueprint for scaling NBS across Mediterranean regions.
PROJECT DEMONSTRATION SITES
SIRENA is implemented in 6 Demonstration sites, 3 in Europe (Origin Labs) and 3 in North-Africa (Implementation Labs):
Origin Lab 1: Rainwater and stormwater harvesting for island water resilience in Mykonos, Greece
Implementation Lab 1: Nature-based stormwater management and reuse in urban Tunis, Tunisia
Origin Lab 2: Constructed wetlands for water availability and biodiversity in agricultural catchments in Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Implementation Lab 2: Rainwater harvesting and agroforestry for rural water security in the Fèz region, Morocco
Origin Lab 3: Nature-based tertiary wastewater treatment and reuse at the Manlleu and Centelles WWTPs, Osona, Catalonia, Spain
Implementation Lab 3: Constructed wetlands for water reuse and migratory-bird habitat restoration in Hurghada, Egypt
SEL NTUA team
Simos Malamis, Danos Mamais, Constantinos Noutsopoulos, Elsa Pantopoulou, Filippos Gkoumas, Dimitris Michailaris, Andriani Galani, Chara Dolgira, Lambrini Papaspyrou, Kleopatra Gega.
OUR ROLE
As Project Coordinator, SEL NTUA leads the overall governance, management and quality/risk framework of SIRENA (WP1) and represents the consortium to the PRIMA Foundation. It runs the Greek Origin Lab (OL1, Mykonos) and co-leads WaterMED Hub 1 on urban and rural surface-runoff management. SEL NTUA also leads the WEFE-Nexus impact assessment (T6.1) and the WaterMED Labs upscaling roadmaps (T5.5), and co-leads the OL–IL co-creation activities (T4.2) and the SIRENA Community of Practice and clustering (T7.3).
