Italy has always had a long dramatic history of extreme events such as landslides, flooding, land degradation and drought. Much has been done in terms of prevention and monitoring but still there is much left to do, in particular introducing innovative alert systems based on the integration of real-time weather forecasting with national alert and protection systems. Recent drought events in the past decade have put new light on the pressing need to improve water use efficiency, introducing on one hand new criteria regarding water resources governance and management by water authorities and agencies involved in this, and on the other, fostering innovative techniques that may enable farmers to improve overall economic and sustainable production by adopting rigorous criteria in terms of managing techniques such as water scheduling. A great effort on this matter has been made by the National Association of Land Reclamation and Irrigation Consortia (ANBI), by introducing and spreading the use of the innovative IRRIFRAME software. IRRIFRAME is an expert system the use of which has allowed the saving up to today, according to data published by ANBI, something between 15 and 25% of water for farmers, increasing both the quantity and quality of agricultural production at the same time. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Resume L'Italie a toujours eu une histoire longue et dramatique des evenements extremes tels que les glissements de terrain, les inondations, la degradation des terres, et, plus recemment, la secheresse. Beaucoup a ete deja fait en termes de prevention et de surveillance, mais il reste encore beaucoup a faire, en particulier les nouveaux systemes d'alerte innovante basee sur l'integration des conditions meteorologiques en de prevision temps reel, avec alerte nationale et declenchement de systemes de protection. Les secheresses recurrentes de la derniere decennie ont mis un nouvel eclairage sur le besoin d'ameliorer efficacement l'utilisation de l'eau, d'une part, en introduisant de nouveaux criteres modernes de gouvernance et de gestion des ressources en eau a destination des agences et organismes idoines, et, d'autre part, en favorisant des techniques novatrices qui peuvent permettre aux agriculteurs d'ameliorer la production economique globale et durable. Cela suppose d'adopter des criteres rigoureux en termes de gestion des techniques telles que la planification de l'eau. Un grand effort sur cette question a ete obtenu par l'Association nationale des consortiums d'amenagement des terres et de l'irrigation (ANBI), par l'introduction et la promotion du logiciel innovant IRRIFRAME. IRRIFRAME est un systeme expert dont l'utilisation a permis d'economiser, selon les donnees publiees par ANBI, entre 15 et 25% de l'eau agricole, tout en augmentant la quantite et la qualite de la production. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
