JPI_URBANWAT project. Tools and criteria for URBAN groundWATer management

According to the European Union, half of the human population will live in cities, one of the main water spend zones and focus of pollutants it is expected by 2050. Considering the growing pressure on water resources whole world, a better knowledge for its management is needed to face this situation.

URBANWAT is a project funded by the EU Commission under the call “Closing the Water Cycle Gap” of the Water JPI Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda. The goal of this project is to come up with an improvement of tools and criteria for groundwater management in urban areas to guarantee the urban water resources sustainability, identify their potential uses and their risks related to groundwater use from both environmental and human health perspectives by an integral approach developing novel technologies and methodologies.

The project will involve a multidisciplinary approach integrating the research of the natural state of the hydrological cycle and pollutants identification (general chemistry, pollutants of emerging concern (CECs) and microorganisms, with emphasis in viruses).

To achieve that goal, URBANWAT proposes to use innovative approaches based on liquid chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry (HLC-RMS) to: (1) detect differences in degradation in different anoxic conditions employing CECs as indicators of contamination and their transformation products (TPs) as indicators of degradability; (i2)  analyse fate and transport of chosen contaminants in the soil-plant as a remediation system utilizing picked infrastructures; (3) understand the contaminants movement applying encapsulated DNA nanoparticles; (4)  scout the presence of new and emergent viruses in groundwater samples employing viral metagenomics. Viral concentration methods from water samples will be also optimized in this research. To do so, column experiments will be carried out.

URBANWAT project will focus on Barcelona city. In parallel, several studies will be carried out at full-scale in the demonstration facility called ‘WaterStreet’ at TUDelft. The expected results will help to provide novel and cost-efficient technologies for urban groundwater management with beneficial environmental, economic and societal impacts for the European Union (EU) facilitating their application worldwide.