New roadmap to accelerate innovation in water quality management

Anne Hummelen, the director of TKI Water Technology, explains that the roadmap has been drawn up to guide the next step: “Innovation in water quality monitoring is moving rapidly, and that includes TKI Water Technology’s innovation projects. The roadmap shows that the biggest challenge is no longer the monitoring technology alone: the data also have to be transformed into insights and actions that contribute to better water quality.”

The roadmap comes at a crucial moment. The deadline of 2027 in the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is fast approaching and there is growing concern that the Netherlands will not meet its water quality targets in time. That may have implications for nature, public health, economic development and permit procedures. Like the Wennink Report, the roadmap warns that, without additional measures, the Netherlands may suffer similar effects to those seen in the nitrogen emissions crisis.

“The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is looking for affordable, innovative monitoring technologies that will make it possible to monitor the quality of Dutch waters and the water chain reliably, in detail and on a continuous basis. This is important given the need to meet the WFD targets. We need to tackle this together, which is why it’s great that this roadmap brings stakeholders in the water sector and the government closer together,” says Martin van Gelderen, head of the Substances and Water Chain department at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.

Image 1: Martin van Gelderen (left), head of the Substances and Water Chain Department at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and Joep van den Broeke (right), co-author of the roadmap and Programme Manager at TKI Water Technology.

From monitoring to understanding and action

The concept of action-oriented monitoring is central to the roadmap: speeding up the process of collecting, processing and transforming water quality data into a concrete action perspective. The underlying principle here is: know what you need to do and monitor what you actually do. The deployment of innovative sensors, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and infrastructure for data and information systems allows anomalies to be flagged faster. Sources of pollution can also be identified better. In addition, appropriate measures can be selected in a more targeted way, and the effects can be monitored more directly.

The roadmap argues that the necessary innovations are not coming fast enough and not in a coordinated way. That is why the roadmap calls for a multi-year, coordinated approach in which the government, research institutions, water managers and the business community will work together on new monitoring technologies, a national data infrastructure, expert systems for decision-making and practice-based field labs. Governance, collaboration and long-term investments are needed for this purpose with the aim of boosting the innovative capacity required to tackle water quality challenges effectively and prevent future crises in water quality.

TKI Water Technology wants the roadmap to guide the development and application of solutions for smarter and more effective water quality management in the Netherlands. The roadmap should serve as the starting point for more intensive collaboration and further development in the field of action-oriented monitoring.

Field labs bring innovation to the field

VPdelta, TU Delft’s partner programme for climate adaptation, also confirms on the basis of practical experience that collaboration and the pooling of knowledge and innovative capacity are essential. Jos Verdoold, a member of the Schieland and Krimpenerwaard water authority and a member of the VPdelta steering group, emphasises the important role that field labs, such as Blijdorp Zoo, can play in accelerating innovation: “The Blijdorp Zoo field lab is bringing together a lot of innovative capacity. It is valuable to have a location of this kind in our area where research takes place and where, working with innovative companies and colleagues from the water authority, we can experiment with new monitoring approaches.”

In addition, the field lab also provides relevant insights for science, points out Doris van Halem (Professor of Drinking Water Quality at TU-Delft): “A living lab like this, which has been designed to enhance our understanding, really does warm my scientific heart. And my engineer’s heart leaps at the thought of getting to work on concrete solutions based on that understanding”. There was also good news from the Delfland water authority. Stijn van Boxmeer of the authority announced that, over the next two years, work will continue in collaboration with TU-Delft to develop Blijdorp Zoo further as a field lab.

About TKI Water Technology

TKI Water Technology brings together businesses, research organisations and government authorities to put knowledge and innovations in water technology into practice. Together, they work on innovations that help to improve water quality and water availability, and contribute to a climate-positive water chain.