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HYDRIA Water Network

HYDRIA Project, Athens, Greece

Since 2008, MIO-ECSDE is coordinating the HYDRIA Project, serving as a virtual museum that unfolds the tangible and intangible Mediterranean water related heritage. The HYDRIA Project promotes digitization of water cultural heritage as a key factor for unlocking its potential assets for sustainable development. The HYDRIA online platform (in three languages: English, Arabic and Greek) has digitalized 36 cases from countries of the Mediterranean on representative water cultural heritage including water monuments and hydraulic works and sites of the distant and more recent past, studying them in a systematic way.

Here the link to the project web-page: www.hydriaproject.info

Large scale water management works (aqueducts, water galleries, river management and dams), small scale works at the level of buildings and building complexes (cisterns, wells, watermills, fountains etc) and water heritage sites of specific importance are presented through animations and illustrations, texts and timelines, to explain operation, techniques and concepts as well as illustrating the links to natural and cultural heritage of the places. In this way, the HYDRIA project using water as a “vehicle” unfolds the diverse, tangible and intangible Mediterranean cultural heritage.

HYDRIA offers the opportunity to its e-visitors to browse and discover the case studies in three different ways:

(i) by type (cisterns, aqueducts, foggaras, water management large scale works, water mills, fountains, etc)

(ii) by time period (when these water monuments were constructed)

(iii)  by location.

HYDRIA targets all citizens, particularly Youth as well as the formal and non-formal educational community; it highlights the role of young citizens as water consumers and makes them reflect and reconsider their responsibility towards more sustainable water consumption and management.

HYDRIA has been granted and awarded as a good practice by UNESCO (2011) and the Anna Lindh Foundation (2010).

MIO-ECSDE through the HYDRIA was among the founding members of the Global Network of the Water Museums launched in Venice in 2017

SERs

Education & Awareness Raising Tool

HYDRIA webpage is functioning as a continuous education & awareness raising tool that:

– Demonstrates the variety, richness and wisdom in the methodologies and practices of the water management in the Mediterranean in the past;

– Presents water monuments and hydraulic sites that are not so known or valorized highlighting their particular features and added-value;

–  Uses past know-how as inspiration for modern appliances & technologies

–  Keeps promoting an intercultural dialogue across the Mediterranean region.

To this end, the HYDRIA 39 case studies have been presented and discussed in several educational workshops and awareness raising sessions, indicatively we mention:

– Enabling educators to implement Education for Sustainable Development, Training of Trainers, Amman, 2017.

–  International Workshop on Water Museums, Venice, 2017

– Water Cultural Heritage: Enhancement Strategies, Water Shares Project, Rome, 2012

– The Water Cultural Heritage, ICOMOS Greece, 2011 Athens.

In particular, when working with the educators at all educational levels we urge them to use the HYDRIA in the framework of interdisciplinary activities, ESD projects and  subjects such as Environmental Sciences, History, etc. in order for their students to,  on one hand, be aware about the past practices of water management (collection, distribution, use) in the Mediterranean region and find out how the natural environment (landscape, water, biodiversity, climate) impact our technology and civilization, and, on the other, to adopt a water culture aligned with the respect of the natural resources and heritage and their sustainable use.

For more information contact info@mio-ecsde.org