Nowadays, the transition towards sustainable water resources management is more urgent than ever as our freshwater availability faces increasing pressures: according to the 2030 Water Resources Group, global freshwater demand will have exceeded supply by over 40% by 2030. The approach to the management of water resources needs to adapt, moving away from the usual take-use-dispose practice and starting to incorporate water reuse and recycle and use of water from alternative sources.
The challenge taken up by Project Ô is to provide practical tools for implementing the principles of circular use of water, introducing organized and standardized small loops of water reuse/recycling that distribute the weight of water management over the territory and the users, and release the pressure over the infrastructure and the ecosystem.
During its four years, Project Ô aims to demonstrate a novel approach based on a distributed water network that enables the use of sources of water alternative to mains or freshwater, such as brackish water, saltwater and wastewater. This novel approach will be demonstrated thanks to a set of innovative technologies for water treatment able to remove efficiently contaminants and pollutants very difficult or very costly to handle with standard technologies, such as high salt contents, dyes, pharmaceuticals and pathogens. The choice between technological alternatives, water pricing and opportunities for symbiotic agreement between users will be facilitated by two new multi-stakeholder collaborative platforms.
Project Ô water treatment technologies are highly customisable owing to modularity of design and closed loop control, which enable the assembly of flexible plants integrating different innovative technologies according to the actual water contamination. The water treatment pilot plants that will be demonstrated during the project focus on small scale and, when possible, use solar power and solar irradiation, aiming at cost-effective treatment of water from low volumes sources that are difficult to reach or not otherwise economically accessible. The plants are also suitable for intervention over critical spills close to the point of entry, i.e. before they enter the system and therefore get diluted and/or affect the working of the WWTP and/or pollute water bodies.
In addition to the water treatment pilot plants, Project Ô will deliver two multi-user collaborative platforms to evaluate the overall effects of introducing and regulating small water management loops on the system (water utility, water basin, the regional natural and economic territory and its population) and on the users’ business models:
- an ICT-based decision-analytic platform (DAP) to support policy makers in selecting robust and efficient water planning portfolios under current and projected water availability and demand;
- a user-centred platform, the Circular Economy Platform (CEP), to improve the circularity of resources between different partners involved in the water treatment value chain.
Alongside with the practical tools described above, Project Ô promotes an integrated and participative approach to water planning, focusing on the integration of water circular economy approaches into current water resources planning and spatial planning with co-creative schemes to facilitate transition to water circular economy. Project Ô will involve the community and the territory through direct consultation and integration of their point of view on every aspect of the decision making, integrating social science research throughout the entire innovation process.
