CARAVEL: CALCULATING THE VALUE OF WATER

HYDRO Exploitation, in consortium with CREALP (Centre de recherche sur l'environnement alpin / Centre for Research into the Alpine Environment), won the 2022 BlueArk Challenge organised by the BlueArk Entremont, ALTIS and Ark Foundation innovation cluster.

HYDRO and CREALP’s proposal is aimed at solving the “Mon eau a de la valeur” (My Water Has Value) challenge submitted by the Ayent municipality, which was looking for a tool to assess the future economic profitability of water resources as part of the return of concessions.

Climate change

The solution envisaged involves developing a decision-making tool in the form of an online platform called Caravel (Calculateur de la Valeur de l'Eau – Water Value Calculator). It will be easily accessible and usable by non-specialists, and, by integrating technical, economic and environmental factors, will automatically calculate the economic profitability of using water resources. This will enable the municipality to easily quantify the cost of water and its various uses (hydroelectricity, drinking water, irrigation and technical snowmaking) within the context of climate change and the increasing scarcity of water resources.

For the use of concession-granting municipalities

A digital twin of the Lienne catchment is currently being developed by CREALP with the support of HYDRO. Going forward, the partners are envisaging a generic solution that can be adapted to other municipalities or interested entities. HYDRO’s experience in the operation, maintenance and monitoring of hydroelectric schemes will provide this model with key information for assessing the technical and economic needs of concession-granting municipalities.