Project description
New prediction tools to assist water quality management
The water quality of rivers, lakes and reservoirs is severely affected by long-term climate change, extreme events and weather variations. As a result, there is a pressing need for instruments that anticipate the impacts of environmental changes, allowing water management to effectively safeguard water quality. Technological advances have led to new meteorological data products and innovative modelling instruments that have enabled reliable predictions for lake and river water quality on regional and global levels. The EU-funded inventWater project will establish a platform that provides advanced cross-disciplinary training to next-generation water specialists. The project will offer training in data science, climate, hydrology and freshwater ecology, focussing on the development and real-world application of inventive water quality predicting instruments that support fast and reliable decision-making and long-term adaptation policies.
Objective
Long-term climate change, extreme events, and seasonal variations in weather have profound impacts on water quality of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. This implies a pressing need for tools anticipating the impacts of these environmental changes, and enabling effective water management that safeguards the ecosystem goods and services freshwaters provide. The increasing availability of new meteorological data products and advances in modelling tools now mean that it is possible for the first time to produce reliable forecasts for lake and river water quality on a regional and global scale, an unexploited potential in the water sector. Water managers will therefore profit from the education of a new generation of interdisciplinary trained professionals able to bridge fields such as data science, climate, hydrology, and freshwater ecology, who at the same time develop the necessary skills to translate knowledge and technical novelties into products useful for managers, policy-makers, and the general public. The primary objective of inventWater is to organize a platform providing cutting edge cross disciplinary education of tomorrow's water experts. The core activity is the training program, focused on the development and real-world application of inventive water quality forecasting tools across a range of time-scales, to support fast and reliable decision making as well as long-term adaptation policies. inventWater will bring water quality forecasting to the forefront of the scientific disciplines supporting water managers and policy-makers to design measures for adaptation to a new climate. The composition of the network and the multidisciplinary of the PhD projects will make tools developed by inventWater fellows applicable to a wide range of pressing water quality issues, from local adaptation to increases of climatic extreme events, to supporting adaptation strategies to climate change and achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata science
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesfreshwater biology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Keywords
Programme(s)
Coordinator
28006 Madrid
Spain