Final Report Summary - SWAM (Increasing the regional competitiveness and economic growth through the R&TD&I on sustainable water management) Project context and objectives: The availability of water resources is a key contributory factor to economic and social development, as well as being an essential pillar of environmental preservation. Due to the world's population growth, global warming and a decrease in water supply, the efficient management of water resources is a priority for policy makers throughout the world. Most Mediterranean regions, with semi-arid climates, have historically suffered from water scarcity. This has led in many cases to a strong culture in the efficient use of water and development of innovative policies and techniques relating to sustainable water management. Within this context, some Mediterranean regions have developed effective research-driven clusters focused on sustainable and efficient management of water, and dedicate considerable resources to research, technical development and innovation (RTD&I) activities in this field. These regional research-driven clusters are closed to the productive activities in many of the regional economic sectors, making their products and services more competitive in a worldwide and globalised market, while stands for the environmental protection. The international water market is one of the most important growing markets in the world (USD 450 billion, and 7 % - 8 % annual growth), and just like any other sectors, the water technologies (water-tech) sector needs to face issues related to globalisation of markets as well as increasing number of complex technologies, and heterogeneous water scenarios. The SWAM project is proposed to increase the economic growth and global competitiveness of Murcia, Eastern Galilee and Western Greece regions having high potential in the water-tech sector and taking into account the cross-cutting effect of water in these regional economies since water technologies are applied to all productive sectors. There is an innovative approach behind this idea of regional economic growth matched with environmental preservation. Therefore, the above participant regions, belonging to the Mediterranean basin, have many economic, social and culture similarities, and thus research and technological development (RTD) synergies, mutual learning, and business opportunities can be achieved in the further proposed cooperation framework. The overall objective of the SWAM project is to create a common dialogue platform and a joint action plan among three innovative and dynamic water-tech clusters that will maximise their capacity for better RTD investments at regional level through complementarities and synergies, so as to contribute to sustainable development, economic growth, global competitiveness of the regions, and the emergence of the water-tech lead market. But, in the short-medium term context, and in a measurable and verifiable way, the specific SWAM objectives are clearly the following: - to enhance the deeper understanding of the regional research and economic environment, including the assessment of the research infrastructures and support policy schemes, for all the actors belonging to these clusters, in order to gain vision about the current competitiveness of the water-tech sector in these regions; - to create a sharing environment of common priorities and strategies among the participant clusters for mutual learning; - to promote the collaboration among researchers and commercial companies of the participant regions. Project results: During the 28 months of project duration, the following results have been achieved: - setting-up and fine-tuning an efficient operating mode between SWAM partners; - setting-up an efficient relation with regional clusters stakeholders from the different axes of the triple helix approach; - developing productive exchanges of information within the partnership and some other European clusters; - final drafting and conclusion of the joint action plan, scheduling and ambitious but realistic working plan for collaboration among the SWAM partners in the next years. In the same main the following activities and results have been also accomplished: - organisation of the kick-off meeting and elaboration of the kick-off document; - organisation of six network meetings (Greece, Israel, Greece); - SWAM regional competitiveness analysis final report, gathering all reports on cluster analysis which have been presented on each participant region to all the water-tech regional players through three so-called 'seminars on regional competitiveness' events; - three individual regional reports, one per each region, with at least 10 qualifying interviews per region; - three cluster mapping regional reports, one per each region; - three visits to other international clusters for benchmarking (Kalmar in Sweden, Lancaster in United Kingdom and Marseille in France) and one international cluster benchmarking report; - three regional competitiveness seminars to discuss the analysis and benchmarking reports; - common water-tech dialogue platform to introduce the research capacities to research demanders in each region and to maximise the coordination between the different research agendas, including one RTD supply and demand web-databank; -five inter-cluster round table meetings (Patras-Greece, Galilee-Israel and Murcia-Spain); - final joint action plan; - six info-days for 'raising awareness' about existing research collaboration funding opportunities at national/local level or at European level (Patras-Greece, Galilee-Israel and Murcia-Spain); - six mentor-trainings for learning exchange with other emergent research-driven clusters (Cyprus mentored by Galilee-Israel, Diyarbakir-Sanliurfa (Turkey) mentored by Murcia-Spain, and Albania by Patras-Greece), including a set of info-days and mentor-trainings materials; - one brokerage event for mutual sharing of needs and ideas between researchers and commercial companies, held in Tel Aviv-Israel in the framework of the WATEC conference, one of the most important water-technology events in the world (November 2011); - one extensive closure conference, held in Murcia (June 2012), to disseminate the outputs and achieved results in the project among researchers from universities and industry, as well as business men, public administration representatives, EC representatives and other stakeholders of the water-tech clusters; - set of different promotional materials as brochures about collaboration opportunities, booklets about the organisations' profiles, etc., and dissemination in international events, conferences and fairs; - development of the SWAM web-portal; - progress report of activities to the EC, including the final costs statements. Potential impact: The potential impact and dissemination activities of the project are the following: - regional cluster mapping; - accomplishment of the regional cluster mapping and priority setting analysis; - completion of international benchmarking trips; - completion of regional seminars on competitiveness; - completion of regional competitiveness analysis final report; - completion of joint action plan; - completion of brokerage event; - SWAM web portal; - completion and successful submission of closure conference proceedings. List of websites: SWAM project website: http://www.swam-project.eu SWAM project closure event website: http://www.eventoswam.net SWAM on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj8ZGPnrWY1VVTcigKa2Nkw/videos?view=1 Related documents Final Report - SWAM (Increasing the regional competitiveness and economic growth through the R&TD&I on sustainable water management)
