Objective
Groundwater quality in the European Union is deteriorating, which threatens the drinking water quality and supply. Local Authorities acting as land use planners, usually lack insight into the relation between different types of land use and the effects each of them has on the groundwater quality. Drinking water supply companies generally lack insight into the future quality development of their primary source, i.e. groundwater.
When a groundwater contamination is detected, ad-hoc decisions are often taken to invest in (a) purification facilities or (b) reallocation of wells. Both options are rather costly, whereas the long-term efficiency of these investments is unclear due to inadequate insight into the future development of the groundwater quality.
The Utrecht University, in cooperation with KIWA and the authorities and Drinking Water Company of the Province of Limburg, aims at demonstrating a generally applicable Groundwater Quality Prediction System (GQPS) for evaluating the impact of land-use development on sustainable drinking water production, and at demonstrating the feasibility of such a system. For that purpose, a groundwater transport model will be constructed for a case-area in the Province of Limburg, the Netherlands. This innovative project will integrate state of the art groundwater transportation software and computer visualisation techniques.
The results expected are a methodology applicable throughout the Community by which knowledge transfer is achieved through transparent visualisation, leading to:
- prevention of groundwater contamination by increasing the awareness of local authorities of the impact land-use has on the groundwater quality;
- reduction of the waste volume of purification plants and advancing a more efficient use of financial resources, energy and chemicals by drinking water companies;
- use of the model in related sectors, such as surface water quality protection and nature conservation in areas with groundwater discharges.
Topic(s)
Data not availableCall for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
3508 TC Utrecht
Netherlands