ICT4Water annual meeting: the digital transformation of the water sector

ICT4Water cluster annual event gathered nearly 100 professionals from the smart water community to work together on the digital transformation of the water sector.

The event was organised in Brussels by the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and it was the occasion to kick-off the seven Action Groups identified in the ICT4Water Action Plan (interoperability & standardisation, data sharing, smart water, cyber-security, actors' awareness, policy, business models). The seven Action Groups will support the realisation of a Digital Single Market for Water Services.

The cluster is strongly supported by the European Commission and offers an on-line platform for members to work together in order to deliver digital solutions to the entire water value chain.

Policy-makers from different departments - DG Research & Innovation (Violeta Kuzmickaite), DG Environment (Tobias Biermann), DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology (Cristina Martinez and Antonio Sanchez Aparicio) participated in a panel and discussed with participants successes and challenges of current water regulation and its future developments. The meeting was also an occasion to listen from key stakeholders on their views regarding the digitalisation wave transforming to the water sector.

Success stories

Jorge Helmbrecht, CEO of WatEner, presented the story of his company starting from the WatERP project (financed by FP7 and one of the first members of the cluster) to a successful market player. The company offers a web platform for improving daily operation and management of water networks in the water-energy nexus using artificial intelligence.

Niklas Wicén, CEO of Aqua Robur Technologies, shared the entrepreneurial journey that brought Aqua Robur from vision to award-winning business. The company recently received the EUR 2 million worth European Commission “Horizon Prize for Zero Power Water Monitoring” for its innovative solutions to monitor water networks.

New members

The growing interest for the ICT4Water cluster is demonstrated by the increasing number of members. The annual meeting was also the occasion to present 10 projects that joined the cluster in the last year. Even though they face water-related challenges from different angles and domains (might it be preparing Africa for future climate change challenges, or illegal irrigation, or the digitisation of urban water sector), they all have digitalisation and ICT at their core, and they all can benefit by working together within a common platform such as the ICT4Water cluster.

Ten new ICT4Water cluster members welcomed at the annual event

Horizon 2020 AfriAlliance: Africa-EU Innovation Alliance for Water and Climate
Horizon 2020 Ground Truth 2.0: Environmental knowledge discovery of human sensed data
LIFE EFFIDRAIN: Efficient Integrated Real-time Control in Urban Drainage and Wastewater Treatment Plants for Environmental Protection
Horizon 2020 DIANA: Detection and Integrated Assessment of Non-authorised water Abstractions using EO
LIFE SmartWater: Demonstration of smart actuators to reduce water losses and energy consumption in water supply infrastructures in Europe
Horizon 2020 RESCCUE: RESilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban arEas - a multisectorial approach focusing on water
Horizon 2020 Fiware4water: FIWARE for the Next Generation Internet Services for the WATER sector
Horizon 2020 DWC: DIGITAL-WATER.city
Horizon 2020 ScoreWater: Smart City Observatories implement REsilient Water management
Horizon 2020 NAIADES: A holistic water ecosystem for digitisation of urban water sector

Interested in joining the cluster?

Background information

The ICT4Water cluster is a hub for EU-funded research and innovation projects developing digital solutions for the water sector. Since January 2018 the cluster is led by EASME. The cluster supports its members in exchanging information and best practices, disseminating and exploiting project outputs, contributing to define digital water strategies and to policy development in digital and water domain.