AWARD
- PROJECTS
- Jan 1, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Alternative Water Resources and Deliberation process to renew water supply strategic planning
Project name: AWARD
Project title: Alternative Water Resources and Deliberation process to renew water supply strategic planning
Funding program name: HORIZON Innovation Actions
Duration: 36 months
Funding programme and call: HORIZON-CL6-2023-CLIMATE-01
Project budget: 3 690 612.50
SEL NTUA budget: 330 625.00
Coordinator: OiEau
SEL NTUA role: WP Leader and Demo leader (DC#3)
Project website: https://www.awardproject.eu/
Project summary and objectives
AWARD addresses the urgent challenges of water scarcity and climate change by engaging the science, society, and policy into the development of knowledge and strategic water planning. The project promotes evidence-based approaches to incorporate Alternative Water Resources (AWRs) into water supply strategies. Four demonstration cases in Romania, Italy, Cyprus, and Spain are already implementing solutions such as stormwater harvesting, rainwater collection, aquifer recharge, and water reuse. These cases aim to scale up their efforts by integrating AWRs with conventional sources for planning future water supply systems, supported by AWARD tools like Local Water Fora, a Digital Decision Platform, and targeted training. Public engagement and societal awareness are key to advancing AWR solutions. The project is grounded in four dimensions of social innovation: technology, capacity development, governance, and economic assessment. The digital platform provided by AWARD will support the exploration of resilient scenarios that will be promoted beyond the scope of the project. AWARD's general objective is to provide evidence-based knowledge and lessons learnt on how to effectively integrate affordable, acceptable and reliable AWRs solutions into water supply strategic planning and implementation considering the effect of global changes.
Project demonstration sites
Demo case 1- ''Circus Lake'' urban park Bucharest – Lead: UTCB, Partners: BDG.
The study area is the Tei neighborhood, which has two large parks, namely Circus Lake Park and Tei Park. Starting from a large-scale general urban hydrogeological model of the city of Bucharest developed in a previous project, UTCB with the support of data from the water operator of the municipality of Bucharest will develop a local model of increased accuracy for the Tei neighborhood and analyze the potential behavior of the urban aquifer system and the volumes required to recharge it with water. The model will include updated losses of the water supply network, the interaction or sewer network, the barrier effect produced by the existing subway tunnels, as well as any permanent and temporary drainage systems. For the urban area in the Tei neighborhood, rainfall-runoff modeling will be developed to quantify the volumes of water that could be captured to be reused in controlling the Circus lake's water level. A chemical framework for water quality and an appropriate on-site natural treatment scheme will be designed for water reuse.
Demo case 2- Metropolitan city of Milan – Lead: IRIDRA, Partners: CAP, CMM
Demo Case 2 is located The Metropolitan Area of Milan, which is among the most densely populated urban areas in Europe. DC#2 is focusing on climate problems addressed in metropolitan urban areas as local flooding due to runoff excess and urban heat islands. After the analysis and mapping within previous projects SuDS facilities have been developed and will be monitored in two municipalities of the metropolitan area. The aim is to tackle flooding events but also to develope the alternative water resources supply systems to recharge directly or indirectly the shallow urban aquifers.
Demo case 3- Paralimni-Agia Napa City – Cyprus on urban water reuse for irrigation – Lead NTUA, Partners PSB
The Ammochostos (Famagusta) district of Cyprus includes the areas of Paralimni and Agia Napa. The Paralimni Sewerage Board (PSW) operates the main WWTP which collects the wastewater from the two areas. DC#3 aims at tackling water reuse challenges to become a water reuse example worldwide where the water reuse standards are fully met by integrating digital technologies with conventional wastewater treatment coupled with tertiary filtration and disinfection.
Demo case 4- Santiago de Compostela – Lead: AIMEN, Partners: CETAQUA,
The demo case is located in the Tambre industrial Park of Santiago de Compostela in NW of Spain. The demo aims to collect and treat the rain and storm water with a combination of NBS (nature-based solutions) to provide water with quality to reuse in public and private applications according to the European and national regulations. This demo case will also focus on the engagement of stakeholders and the increase of society awareness and acceptance in close collaboration with WP2 and WP6.
Our role in the project
NTUA is leading the Work Package 5 that includes the implementation and monitoring of all the demo sites of the project, supporting all the DC teams in this work. Additionally, NTUA is responsible for DC#3 in Cyprus, where it monitors the operation of the WWTP. The main goals are to optimize its performance, minimize the energy consumption of the bioreactors, and simultaneously produce high-quality reclaimed water. NTUA also contributes to various social activities within the project, such as enhancing public awareness and engagement, conducting policy gap analyses etc.
