| projects-021 |
908448 |
AMWRUC |
modelling of integrated water systems under uncertainty for aquatic environment rehabilitation in rapidly urbanised catchments |
FP7 |
No data |
PEOPLE-2007-4-2.IIF |
2011-09-01 |
2012-08-31 |
Completed |
€ 000 015 000.00 |
"Many catchments in developing countries are undergoing rapid urbanization, in which water systems become a fusion of natural water bodies, rivers, and man-made water networks. It has also been widely recognized that rehabilitation of the aquatic environment is essential in maintaining the system's ecological and hydrological balance, especially under rapid urbanisation. There have been a number of EU projects, e.g. NeWater and AquaStress, on adaptive and integrated modelling of catchments, but very few have investigated adaptive measures necessary for rapidly developing countries. Modeling of these water systems poses a significant challenge and requires a change in thought paradigm in order to deal with rapid spatial-temporal changes in the physical elements and the associated catchment responses. Two case studies from Southern China, Maozhou river catchment and Shenzhen river catchment, would be carried out to demonstrate the reliability and effectiveness of the approach. The two catchments are both located in rapidly urbanised area of China but have different urbanisation level. Aquatic environments in the two catchments have been severely damaged due to tempestuous disturbances of human activities. The adaptive modelling approach would be applied to support decision making for aquatic environment rehabilitation in the catchments. The objective of the project is to develop a novel framework of adaptive approach to model the integrated water systems, which is subjected to rapid changes over a relatively short period of time, effectively. It is envisaged that within the proposal framework, various simulation models, optimisation techniques and uncertainty analysis methods are integrated on a common platform to build up the fully integrated model of water system. This adaptive framework would allow decision makers to investigate the feasibility of different catchment rehabilitation measures within a common platform for better comparison and sound judgments." |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/908448 |
Rivers and estuaries', 'Urban water' |
| projects-022 |
301953 |
IMPALA |
IMProved multivariate frequency Analysis of flood extremes by copuLAs in a non-stationary environment |
FP7 |
No data |
FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF |
2013-02-01 |
2015-01-31 |
Completed |
€ 000 187 888.20 |
"One of the biggest challenges of the flood frequency analysis that water resources managers have to face recently is modelling two or more inter-dependent flood variables (floods at river confluences; flood and the respective volumes and durations), and accounting for the non-stationarity of the environment. The IMPALA project offers multidisciplinary solution to this problem by copula-based multivariate frequency modelling of flood extremes with the inclusion of information on historical and regional ungauged extremes and respecting the effects of the changing environment, including further development of methods for spatial data extension and their verification on a Europe-wide scale.Copulas are novel and flexible statistical tool suitable for frequency modelling of multivariate flood extremes. Nevertheless, their application is not trivial, and additionally, the general lack of the available data in the extreme spectrum of the joint distribution makes the flood risk assessment unreliable. The project IMPALA is aimed at improving the multivariate frequency modelling of flood characteristics by increasing the density of the observations in the extreme tails of the marginal distributions. This will be reached by direct inclusion of extraordinary flood data into a univariate flood frequency analysis of marginals, by means of the Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. Depending on the type of the extraordinary data, different strategies will be adopted: (a) flood extremes from ungauged catchments will be included using a regional approach and the stationary concept, while (b) historical flood extremes will be included using the local approach and the non-stationarity assumption. The project IMPALA will take advantage of existing pan-European databases of streamflow records and catchment descriptors such as those held by the FRIEND or HYDRATE projects, and data from the relevant gauging authorities in Slovakia and Austria." |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/301953 |
Rivers and estuaries' |
| projects-023 |
607000 |
QUICS |
Quantifying Uncertainty in Integrated Catchment Studies |
FP7 |
No data |
FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN |
2014-06-01 |
2018-05-31 |
Completed |
€ 004 058 233.86 |
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is the most significant EU legislation concerning surface water management. Programs of Measures are required to ensure water bodies achieve a good ecological status. It is important to predict the impact of interventions on water quality. Man-made and natural processes control surface water quality, these are highly complex with a range of sources, transport and transformation processes. Cost estimates by EU governments indicate that billions of euros will be spent over several decades to implement WFD. There is an increasing level of concern on the implementation cost (financial and carbon). Integrated water quality models designed to predict the quality of water across the linked urban and rural scales in a catchment is seen as a tool to optimise this cost. Integrated Catchment Modelling (ICM) is based on linking numerous empirically calibrated sub-models of water quality processes. Catchment scale WQ predictions are then used to justify investment. Current water quality sub-models contain significant uncertainty. Methods have been developed to quantify uncertainty at a level however little work has been carried out to investigate WQ uncertainty propagation between sub-models. QUICS will develop a generalised catchment wide approach to uncertainty assessment that can then be used in WFD implementation studies. It will address uncertainty propagation at the spatial and temporal scales found in catchments and develop tools to reduce uncertainty by optimising sampling and monitoring and the objective selection of model structure. This will reduce uncertainty in WQ predictions and result in better informed investment decisions and so have a significant impact on WFD implementation. QUICS contains leading water quality scientists, uncertainty experts and private sector water management practitioners and modellers. It will train researchers capable of developing and implementing uncertainty management tools into ICM studies. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/607000 |
Urban water', 'Rivers and estuaries', 'Coastal waters' |
| projects-024 |
318985 |
SmartWater |
Smart Sensor Networks with energy harvesting for real time monitoring in urban Water infrastructure |
FP7 |
No data |
FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IRSES |
2012-07-01 |
2015-06-30 |
Completed |
€ 000 157 500.00 |
The SmartWater Programme will improve sensors in the water system by investigating smart sensor networks with Energy Harvesting for real time monitoring of the water infrastructure. The project will look at the problem of limited power resources to carryout monitoring of the water distribution system. Benefits of the research to end users will be: reduced dependency on battery power, reduced installation and maintenance costs, real time monitoring, water consumption reduction, detection of abnormalities in the water supply system and energy saving. These areas are all important to the European Commission’s policy ‘Addressing the challenge of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union’ (2007).The consortium is made up of institutions experienced in hosting international exchanges from the UK, the Netherlands and China. The partners have track records in smart sensor networks and communication, power harvesting technology, real time modelling and control in water distribution system. The six organisations are at the forefront of their fields. The consortium will support established and new partnerships. The exchanges will include delivering work packages and dissemination of results through international conferences and seminars.By combining partner skills, the project will be able to look at the sensor network and identify intelligent power management systems to improve energy consumption. A new long-term research group will emerge from the work, with early stage researchers who have been exposed to a culture of international collaborative research. The consortium will share findings with a large network of contacts outside the collaboration. This will include businesses and research institutions around the globe. The research could then be commercialised into a self powered data logger for water utility companies. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/318985 |
Urban water' |
| projects-025 |
619532 |
EPPICS |
Event Prediction and Decision Support based on Huge Data from Physical-Social Systems |
FP7 |
No data |
ICT-2013.4.2 |
2014-02-01 |
2017-01-31 |
Completed |
€ 008 480 714.00 |
Miniaturisation, progress with energy issues and cost reductions have resulted in rapid growth in deployment of networked devices and sensors, very strongly connecting the internet with the physical world. With wide adoption of smartphones and social media, also people have become key sources of information about the physical world, corresponding events and the intents and plans of many individuals. With more than a billion of people organizing their lives electronically and sharing information via social platforms on the Internet and with the number of devices connected to the Internet already exceeding the number of people on earth and still growing to an estimated 50 billion devices by 2020, handling these massive amounts of data becomes a huge challenge. Surmounting this challenge, however, may give us previously unattainable understanding of events and changes in our surrounding environments. EPPICS will develop large scale adaptive methods to enable pervasive modelling, monitoring and predicting of events in the real world by extracting and combining data and information from physical and social sensors. Such methods will be integrated into a platform that will support citizens, authorities and organizations in taking informed and timely decisions when tackling real world events. Application domains will cover the intelligent management in urban settings with a particular focus on city-wide events management as well as water management, specifically monitoring and reacting to widespread floods. EPPICS will provide the technological and methodological framework for the capturing, integrating, modeling and forecasting of the large-scale hybrid information deriving from hundreds of sensors, thousands of cars and large-scale social media. The technology will enable the authorities a huge leap in terms of the ability to manage large events where hundreds of thousands of people are involved at the same time. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/619532 |
Urban water', 'Rivers and estuaries' |
| projects-026 |
265170 |
ERMITAGE |
Enhancing Robustness and Model Integration for The Assessment of Global Environmental Change |
FP7 |
No data |
ENV.2010.4.2.1-1 |
2010-12-01 |
2013-11-30 |
Completed |
€ 004 355 313.77 |
The development of interdisciplinary modelling tools and platforms to address the interactions between natural and socio-economic systems is an active research area in Europe. Nevertheless, notable gaps still exist in modelling capabilities, in particular, very little progress has been made to date in the direct coupling of models that resolve the spatial distribution of climate change with sectorally and regionally resolved economic models. Interactive couplings between climate and impact models are relatively underdeveloped. Likewise, the coupling of detailed economic models with impact and adaptation models is still at a relatively early stage. Finally, a coherent assessment of uncertainty is completely lacking in overall integrated assessments. The sustainability of agriculture and land-use policies and practices including water availability and the sustainability of climate policies that rely on high shares of bioenergy are critical applications that demand a spatially resolved representation of global environmental change including feedbacks between natural and socio-economic forces. ERMITAGE proposes to improve and extend existing modular frameworks for the coupling of intermediate complexity models of the natural and socio-economic systems to address the issues cited above. The resulting integrated assessment framework models will be applied to the analysis of post-2012 climate initiatives taking into account uncertainties and regional conflicts of interest in a coordinated way, propagating the analysis of uncertainty from climate simulation through to policy analysis, focusing particularly on the sustainability of agriculture, bioenergy and water resources. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/265170 |
Urban water' |
| projects-027 |
236296 |
IFLOW |
Intake Flow Simulation and Optimisation for Hydropower |
FP7 |
No data |
FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008 |
2009-06-01 |
2011-05-31 |
Completed |
No data |
The flow simulation and optimization in terms of the efficient water power utilization is the essential topic of the proposal. The main goals of the submitted project are: - To identify the negative influence of ill-designed intake structures at run-off river power plants on the water turbine efficiency and the rotor vibrations; - To find and prove the methodology of intake structure geometry optimization by means of the numerical flow simulation and the physical modelling, and to reach the best conditions for maximal turbine efficiency and its output. The project combines civil hydraulic engineering with mechanical hydraulic engineering. Turbine producers focus on the design of a runner and adjacent water passage, whereas civil engineers concentrate on a broader area of free surface. The project is going to solve the complex intake flow interdisciplinary concerning the entire intake section configuration. The fellow will thus utilize his recent expertise in both fields and to help bridging the existing gap between both civil and mechanical engineering. Undertaking of the project will also enable the fellow to acquire the better familiarity with CFD simulation methods and their implementation into hydropower and to deepen many other complementary skills. The excellent computation accessories of the host organization will be used for flow simulations. The computed results will be verified on a physical test model in the Hydraulic laboratory at the host institution too. Modern disturbance-free laser anemometry will be applied for measurements at physical model. Regarding the support of power renewable resources, the resolved problems are very current nowadays. There are lots of refurbishments of outdated low head run-off river power plants in order to increase higher efficiency of hydropower generation. That’s why it is important to deal with a question, to what extent the ill-shaped intake structures influence the turbine behaviour. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/236296 |
Rivers and estuaries', 'Water reservoir' |
| projects-028 |
244255 |
WASSERMED |
Water Availability and Security in Southern EuRope and the Mediterranean |
FP7 |
No data |
ENV.2009.1.1.5.2 |
2010-01-01 |
2013-03-31 |
Completed |
€ 003 669 943.27 |
The WASSERMed project will analyse, in a multi-disciplinary way, ongoing and future climate induced changes in hydrological budgets and extremes in southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East under the frame of threats to national and human security. A climatic and hydrological component directly addresses the reduction of uncertainty and quantification of risk. This component will provide an interface to other climatologic projects and models, producing climate change scenarios for the Mediterranean and Southern Europe, with special emphasis on precipitation. Five case studies will be considered: 1) Syros Island (Greece), 2) Sardinia Island (Italy), 3) Merguellil watershed (Tunisia), 4) Jordan river basin, and 5) the Nile River system (Egypt). The case studies are illustrative and represent situations which deserve special attention, due to their relevance to national and human security. Furthermore, impacts on key strategic sectors, such as agriculture and tourism, will be considered, as well as macroeconomic implications of water availability in terms of regional income, consumption, investment, trade flows, industrial structure and competitiveness. WASSERMed is an interdisciplinary project, which overall aims at all three targets of the call, through the integration of climate change scenarios, holistic water system modelling and interdisciplinary impact assessment, with three main contributions: a) Integration of climate change scenarios, holistic water system modelling. This provides results for reduction of uncertainties of climate change impacts on hydrology in the identified regions; b) Interdisciplinary approach, coupling macroeconomic implications and technical indicators. This provides a better assessment of climate effects to water resources, water uses and expected security risks; c) Proposal of specific adaptation measures for key sectors of the Mediterranean economy. This provides better basis for achieving water security. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/244255 |
Rivers and estuaries', 'Urban water' |
| projects-029 |
282882 |
EcoWater |
Meso-level eco-efficiency indicators to assess technologies and their uptake in water use sectors |
FP7 |
No data |
ENV.2011.3.1.9-2 |
2011-11-01 |
2014-12-31 |
Completed |
€ 003 034 643.13 |
EcoWater will address the development of meso-level eco-efficiency indicators for technology assessment through a systems' approach. The effort will focus on enhancing the understanding of the interrelations of innovative technology uptake in water use systems, and their economic and environmental impacts. Research will address the selection of indicators appropriate for assessing system-wide eco-efficiency improvements, the integration of existing tools and assessment methods in a coherent modelling environment, and the analysis and characterisation of existing structures and policies. The development of an analytical framework is foreseen, to support: (i) Systemic environmental impact assessments, (ii) Economic assessments, (iii) Analysis of value chains and actor interactions, and (iv) Technology implementation and uptake scenarios. Eight Case Studies will be developed, in different systems and sectors of high economic relevance and environmental impact, addressing water use in agricultural, urban and industrial sectors. Two Case Studies will focus on shifts from rainfed to irrigated agriculture and innovations that can reduce water and energy footprints and production inputs. Two Case Studies will address sustainable and economically efficient water supply and wastewater management in urban areas. Four Case Studies will concern meso-level eco-efficiency improvements from innovative technologies in water systems for the textile industry, for energy production, for dairy production and in the automotive industry. The main outputs include a validated and tested methodological framework, an integrated toolbox for systems' eco-efficiency analysis, and policy recommendations for technology uptake and implementation. For ensuring wide dissemination and applicability, the project foresees activities to address different target audiences and to develop operational science-industry-policy links at the level of Case Studies and at wider EU and international scale. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/282882 |
Urban water' |
| projects-030 |
226273 |
WISER |
Water bodies in Europe: Integrative Systems to assess Ecological status and Recovery |
FP7 |
No data |
ENV.2008.2.1.2.3. |
2009-03-01 |
2012-02-29 |
Completed |
€ 009 022 069.24 |
WISER will support the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) by developing tools for the integrated assessment of the ecological status of European surface waters (with a focus on lakes and coastal/transitional waters), and by evaluating recovery processes in rivers, lakes and coastal/transitional waters under global change constraints. The project will (1) analyse existing data from more than 90 databases compiled in previous and ongoing projects, covering all water categories, Biological Quality Elements (BQEs) and stressor types and (2) perform targeted field-sampling exercises including all relevant BQEs in lakes and in coastal/transitional waters. New assessment systems will be developed and existing systems will be evaluated for lakes and coastal/transitional waters, with special focus on how uncertainty affects classification strength, to complete a set of assessment methodologies for these water categories. Biological recovery processes, in all water categories and in different climatic conditions, will be analysed, with focus on mitigation of hydromorphological and eutrophication pressures. Large-scale data will be used to identify linkages between pressure variables and BQE responses. Specific case studies, using a variety of modelling techniques, will address selected pressure-response relationships and the efficacy of mitigation measures. The responses of different BQEs and different water categories to human-induced degradation and mitigation will be compared, with special focus on response signatures of BQEs within and among water categories. Guidance for the next steps of the intercalibration exercise will be given by comparing different intercalibration approaches. Stakeholders will be included from the outset, by building small teams of stakeholders and project partners responsible for a group of deliverables, to ensure the applicability and swift implementation of results. |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/226273 |
Rivers and estuaries', 'Lake', 'Coastal waters' |
