project

Water-Futures

How should the world achieve high-quality water services in the future while facing severe climate, economic and population pressures under deep uncertainty?

Water-Futures, a 10M Euros European Research Council  (ERC) funded project (ERC Synergy Grant), aims to develop a theoretical and practical basis for designing water systems. The project will provide a framework for allocating and developing decisions on drinking water infrastructure systems, the next generation of smart urban water systems.

New horizons for the future of smart urban water systems

The continuous expansion of our urban footprint requires new well-planned water infrastructures to meet dramatically increasing water demands. Water-Futures will provide a holistic, intelligent decision-making framework to enable various stakeholders, policymakers, managers and operators to make socially-acceptable and fair decisions for managing water infrastructures in the cities of the future.

A theoretical and practical framework

Water-Futures will develop a new theoretical and practical framework for the allocation and development decisions on drinking water infrastructure systems to be socially equitable, economically efficient and environmentally resilient, as advocated by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The framework will integrate real-time and short-term decisions with long-term infrastructure transitioning and planning for evolving urban water distribution systems under multiple possible futures and deep uncertainties

Three case studies exemplifying different urban water systems types

The Water-Futures team will build on synergies from five research groups, transcending methodologies from water science, systems and control theory, economics and decision science, and machine learning. It will deliver an open-source integrated decision and control framework for the urban water systems of the future.

The team will apply the scientific outcomes to three case studies exemplifying different types of urban water systems:

  1. A mature and relatively stable system.
  2. A mature and rapidly expanding system.
  3. A relatively recent supply system in a developing country.

Collaboration among five partners investigate smart urban water systems

Water-Futures is a six-year EU funded project under the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant. In this project, five partners collaborate to deliver a new theoretical framework for socially-acceptable and fair decisions on drinking water infrastructure systems.