Water4Cities · Holistic Surface Water and Groundwater Management for Sustainable Cities

Holistic Surface Water and Groundwater Management for Sustainable Cities

Problem: Rapid urbanization, intensified agriculture and industry combined with water scarcity and climate change pressures that include long drought periods or extreme storm water events and diminishing fresh water supplies, set water quantity and quality monitoring as an imperative component of an efficient urban water management scheme. Worldwide, policy instruments, such as the EC Water Framework Directive and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Water Management Plans and Best Practices are applying pressure to authorities of all levels to actually implement such innovative solutions. However, the deployment of advanced high-quality real-time monitoring activities in urban settings is not yet achieved due to several reasons including: i) difficulties in collecting precise and robust monitoring data; ii) standardization issues that prohibit interoperability and iii) use of simple data mining and data visualization techniques that do not fully exploit the value of data collected. Impact to society: The Water4Cities project targeted multiple stakeholders at city level. The national ministries and agencies (for finance, energy, development, tourism etc.) could benefit from the results of the Water4Cities project by getting new tools to analyze water resources at a given region and support policy coordination and guidance and improve water management services in the country. The authorities (regional, local) can obtain further information and knowledge that will guide the implementation of practices aiming at the sustainable exploitation of water in line with high consumers’ water services in their respective region the national and the EU legislative and institutional framework and reduce water stresses associated with climate change, while generating business opportunities for SMEs. The public/private utility companies (water/electricity suppliers, utility engineers etc.) benefit from lower operating costs, cost-effective and environmental-friendly practices, and improvement in their water services overall regime and gain further information and knowledge about present and future decisions for water sustainability issues. Objectives: The Water4Cities project developed Information and Communications Technology (ICT) tools that enable water utilities, authorities and other relevant stakeholders to a) monitor in real-time critical urban water resources parameters; b) support their decisions for optimal urban water management of minimal environmental impact and c) involve policy makers, corporations and public to provide support for sound and balanced decision-making. The Water4Cities project contributes to a sustainable management of urban water by relying on three main innovation pillars: i) the design of a holistic integrated methodology for urban surface water and groundwater monitoring and management; ii) the construction of a beyond the state-of-the-art data collection and analysis mechanism for urban water monitoring and prediction; iii) the enablement of visualization of water related data for sustainable urban water management.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union