WST

Project information

Water Smart Territories (WST) is a smart specialisation platform that was created in September 2019 in the context of responding to the trends that will determine the competitiveness of the European water industry:

1) Driving resilient infrastructures: Ageing infrastructures and low investment in operation and maintenance; persistent and emerging pollutants, water losses and resource scarcity.

2) Digitalisation: Business intelligence, big data -acquisition and management-, sensors, robotics, virtual reality are new elements that could facilitate water management for different water users and uses.

3) Circular economy: resource recovery, sludge valorisation, water reuse, energy efficiency.

4) Enabling multi-stakeholder governance: water should be managed for multiple water users: agriculture, urban and industrial water consumers.

The mission of this WST partnership is to strengthen the innovation capacity of European regions beyond resource efficiency, in order to facilitate new investments based on open innovation infrastructures and new technologies for sustainable water management by key actors in regional ecosystems. Closer and interdisciplinary collaboration between partner regions and regional cluster organisations will respond to the challenges of the water industry by providing advanced technological solutions to address the needs of European water territories and society.