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A HOLISTIC APPROACH TOWARDS HIGH QUALITY URBAN WATER THROUGH EFFECTIVE MONITORING AND URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT PLANNING

Project description

Smart solutions for urban water systems

Urban water systems face pressure from climate change, emerging pollutants, ageing infrastructure, and increasing populations. They are exposed to contaminants such as organic micropollutants, microplastics, pathogens, nutrients and heavy metals. With this in mind, the EU-funded QleanUP project aims to design a water quality management solution that includes sensing technology to detect pollutants and predict their spread. It is introducing new tools and strategies to support timely interventions and long-term resilience. These are being tested in demonstration cases across Europe. The results are expected to contribute to more robust, adaptable water systems and support the transition towards zero pollution.

Objective

Urban water is confronted by global challenges such as climate change and emerging anthropogenic substances. As such, protecting urban water quality requires a proactive approach that increases the urban water system resilience and their surrounding ecosystems.
Thus motivated, the overall objective of QleanUP is to deliver a water quality management platform that will incorporate: 1) Stakeholder engagement; 2) sensors and techniques to monitor levels of existing and emerging pollutants, 3) digital tools to estimate difficult to measure pollutants and understand and predict the spread of pollution, 4) risk-based urban water quality management plans and holistic water quality monitoring.
The objective will be reached by demonstrating a compendium of modular, complementary innovative solutions, including novel real-time (soft-) sensing and water quality measurements, easy to deploy decision tools that support resilient, evidence-based operational awareness of urban water systems and risk-based interventions. In line with the EU zero pollution action plan, QleanUP aspires to increase the resilience of urban water systems in terms of both increased robustness (against short term stresses) and adaptability (against longer term uncertainties) and ensure high-quality urban water, minimising nutrients, heavy metals, (pathogenic) micro-organisms, including anti-microbial resistance (AMR), organic micropollutants (OMPs), including PFAS, and microplastics. To test and validate the efficacy of the urban water management platform, the developed tools and strategies will be demonstrated across five (5) Demo Cases in Switzerland, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, and the UK, supported by co-creation activities and stakeholder engagement.

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2024-ZEROPOLLUTION-02

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Coordinator

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Net EU contribution
€ 924 156,25
Total cost
€ 924 156,25

Participants (15)

Partners (1)