Ms Mariem Doggui from the Franco-Tunisian University for Africa and the Mediterranean successfully presented her master's degree dissertation entitled “Development of a GIS-based modeling approach for potential sites’ identification for re-using Treated wastewater for irrigation in Zaghouan governorate”. She conducted the research at the laboratory of Treatment and Valorization of Reject Waters of the Centre des Recherches et des Technologies des Eaux (CERTE) in the AQUACYCLE Partnership.

The main objective of her research was to identify potential sites for the reuse of reclaimed water for irrigation in the Bent Saidane region of the Zaghouan Governorate in Tunisia.

To guide this identification, Ms Doggui employed a multi-criteria evaluation coupled with a geographic information system (GIS) as a decision support tool. 12 constraints and 5 factors were determined for the selection of sites. For the purpose of analytical prioritization, a relatively simple pairwise comparison method was used. The combination of all constraints by means of the intersection operator resulted in a Boolean map in which the areas coded 0 are assumed to be unsuitable for irrigation while the remaining areas are coded 1.

Next, to identify favourable sites, the factors were normalized by means of fuzzy logic and assigned with weight coefficients.

Finally, a sensitivity analysis was applied to check the reliability of the results obtained, based on several possible scenarios using a weighted linear combination.