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Efficiency control and performance verification of improved approaches for soil-groundwater protection and rehabilitation

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Controlling soil-groundwater protection

Product specifications and standards maintain the welfare of citizens and the environment, and at the same time they promote the European economy to the global market. A European initiative ensured such standards were kept in approaches for soil and groundwater protection.

Climate Change and Environment icon Climate Change and Environment

For innovative environmental technologies to reach the market, it is essential they meet certain criteria. For this purpose, the environmental technology verification (ETV) tool comes in to validate the performance claims of technology manufacturers. The EU-funded Promote project was related to ETV with a particular interest in remediation and monitoring technologies for soil and groundwater systems. Its overall aim was to set up an efficiency control and performance verification (ECV) system for soil and groundwater protection and rehabilitation. Project partners planned to achieve this through a network of testing centres that would cooperate to reach technology performance verification. A standardised set of key information was already set for products related to soil and groundwater by the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN). The Promote project followed this process implementation and assessment to draw certain guidelines, while referring to the standardisation and best available technique reference documents and to the proposed technology evaluation scales. The developed system was driven by vendors who provided valid results on technology performance using fast, easy and cost-effective ways. The whole process of technology verification consisted of 13 steps including contact, application, test, assessment and publication phases. The European Verification Organisation (EVO), the verification board (VB) and the board of experts were involved and a users guide was published with all protocols, forms and checklists required for technology verification application. Before being launched as an official European ETV system for the environmental technology sector, the information generated by the Promote project was disseminated via the Promote and CEN websites.

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