The NextGen initiative will evaluate and champion innovative and transformational circular economy solutions and systems that challenge embedded thinking and practices around resource use in the water sector. We will produce new understandings to underpin the exploitation of techniques and technologies that enhance our ability to recover, refine, reuse, repurpose, capture value from, and extend the use-life of, an ever-increasing range of resources and products, thereby projecting the European water and allied sectors as global circular economy pioneers. NextGen will demonstrate innovative technological, business and governance solutions for water in the circular economy in ten high-profile, large-scale, demonstration cases across Europe, and we will develop the necessary approaches, tools and partnerships, to transfer and upscale. The circular economy transition to be driven by NextGen encompasses a wide range of water-embedded resources: water itself (reuse at multiple scales supported by nature-based storage, optimal management strategies, advanced treatment technologies, engineered ecosystems and compact/mobile/scalable systems); energy (combined water-energy management, treatment plants as energy factories, water-enabled heat transfer, storage and recovery for allied industries and commercial sectors) and materials (nutrient mining and reuse, manufacturing new products from waste streams, regenerating and repurposing membranes to reduce water reuse costs, and producing activated carbon from sludge to minimise costs of micro-pollutant removal). The project mobilises a strong partnership of water companies, industry, specialised SMEs, applied research institutes, technology platforms, city and regional authorities and builds on an impressive portfolio of past research and innovation projects, leveraging multiple European and global networks guaranteeing real impact.

FIWARE is a smart solution platform, funded by the EC (2011-16) as a major flagship PPP, to support SMEs and developers in creating the next generation of internet services, as the main ecosystem for Smart City initiatives for cross-domain data exchange/cooperation and for the NGI initiative. So far little progress has been made on developing specific water-related applications using FIWARE, due to fragmentation of the water sector, restrained by licensed platforms and lagging behind other sectors (e.g. telecommunications) regarding interoperability, standardisation, cross-domain cooperation and data exchange. Fiware4Water intends to link the water sector to FIWARE by demonstrating its capabilities and the potential of its interoperable and standardised interfaces for both water sector end-users (cities, water utilities, water authorities, citizens and consumers), and solution providers (private utilities, SMEs, developers). Specifically we will demonstrate it is non-intrusive and integrates well with legacy systems. In addition to building modular applications using FIWARE and open API architecture for the real time management of water systems, Fiware4Water also builds upon distributed intelligence and low level analytics (smart meters, advanced water quality sensors) to increase the economic (improved performance) and societal (interaction with the users, con-consensus) efficiency of water systems and social acceptability of digital water, by adopting a 2-Tier approach: (a) building and demonstrating four Demo Cases as complementary and exemplary paradigms across the water value chain (Tier#1); (b) promoting an EU and global network of followers, for digital water and FIWARE (cities, municipalities, water authorities, citizens, SMEs, developers) with three complementary Demo Networks (Tier#2). The scope is to create the Fiware4Water ecosystem, demonstrating its technical, social and business innovative potential at a global level, boosting innovation for water.

Water, energy, food, and ecosystems (WEFE) are interconnected, comprising a coherent system (nexus) dominated by complexity and modulated by climatic and socio-economic drivers. Resource constraints, and their interconnectedness could hamper economic development, including optimal trade, market and policy solutions. Moreover, policy objectives tend to be developed with little consideration to multiple sectors, and policy implementation may change nexus characteristics, in turn affecting actor behaviour and policy formulation. NEXOGENESIS will develop and validate: (a) a coherent cross-sectoral policy-making framework at different scales addressing climate and socio-economic change, as well as stakeholder behaviour and transboundary (diplomacy) issues, developed for and validated by stakeholders, policy makers, and academics; (b) a Self-Learning Nexus Assessment Engine (SLNAE) exploiting reinforcement learning, and supporting streamlining water-related policies into the WEFE nexus; (c) a WEFE Nexus Footprint, accompanying the SLNAE. NEXOGENESIS will apply its approach to four European and one case study in southern Africa. Through the case studies, strong stakeholder engagement and validation of output, NEXOGENESIS will improve policies and policy making processes to enhance cooperation and help the EU achieve targets related to the Water Framework Directive, the greener CAP, Green Deal ambitions, as well as ambitions on water diplomacy. NEXOGENESIS outcomes, both during and after the project, will have a major impact on advancing nexus understanding and governance, resulting in a more innovative and more competitive European Union regarding nexus policy-making, backed up by state-of-the-art evidence. NEXOGENESIS will continue to drive impact after the end of the funding period through dedicated outscaling and exploitation objectives to maximise future impacts and will bring project results to extended group of users via an innovative stakeholder engagement process.

Assuring environmental compliance requires a strong network of stakeholders, from citizens and researchers to governments and environmental organisations. Through creative toolkits and protocols, ENFORCE aims to tackle the frequent mismatch between the environmental data gathered by citizens and what authorities require for enforcement purposes. The project will address the challenges in data reporting coming from both the citizens side and the authorities’ side, in order for the obtained data to be usable for environmental enforcement. In this line, ENFORCE introduces the concept of Data Readiness Level (DRL) to assess the maturity of data to be used as evidence in environmental compliance cases. In addition, the project will capitalize on the use of geo-spatial intelligence and AI-enhanced tools, strengthening their capacities, promoting good practices and preparing an inventory on geo-spatial intelligence and AI use. The proposed solution will ensure alignment with the Green Deal Data Space to ensure trustworthy data exchange among the relevant stakeholders. The project encompasses 8 case studies that involve all relevant actors including grassroots organizations, local and regional authorities and a diverse group of experienced researchers forming a scientifically robust interdisciplinary team. The lessons learnt and evaluation results from the case studies will feed the replication guidelines that will be promoted through the ENFORCE capacity building programme and associated policy recommendations to create a multiplier effect for the adoption of citizen science data to support environmental compliance.

AquaSPICE aims at materializing circular water use in the European Process Industries, fostering awareness in resource-efficiency and delivering compact solutions for industrial applications. That challenging aim necessitates (i) multiple state-of-the-art water treatment and re-use technologies, (ii) diverse closer-loop practices regarding water, energy and substances, (iii) a cyber-physical-system controller in the form of a system for real-time monitoring, assessment and optimization of water (re-)use at different interconnected levels and (iv) an effective methodological, regulatory and business framework. AquaSPICE not only offers these but claims their sufficiency, as also supported by the breadth of European process industries who are here to evaluate (i)-(iv). AquaSPICE’s innovations emanate from the requirements of the Case Studies, involving industrial actors (Dow, BASF, Water-Link, Solvay, ARETUSA, Agricola, and TUPRAS) in 5 EU countries (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Romania) and 1 associated country (Turkey). AquaSPICE follows a systemic approach in water management where optimal efficiency can be achieved through an adaptation of appropriate technologies and practices in different levels, from a single industrial process (unit operation), to an entire factory, to other collaborating industries (industrial symbiosis) or other sectors (e.g. domestic and/or agriculture). AquaSPICE enables and facilitates the immediate uptake, replication and up-scaling of innovations, by providing comprehensive strategic, business and organizational plans that offer a range of well-defined and pre-packaged solutions, suitable for various cases with quite different characteristics.