Innovative Solution

technical

In accordance with the principles of science policy interface, the general objective of WaterDiss2.0 is to speed-up the transfer of research outputs to water management institutions (a basin authority or a city) with a targeted time lag of only 3 – 5 years.

Information on about 60 water-related FP6/FP7 research projects outputs is being collected and their potential future analysed in close collaboration with the research teams. The project will organise social events and wide use of e-infrastructure to help stakeholders meet and share ideas. It includes also brokerage events, seminars, summer schools. The e-infrastructure is a mix of social networking tools, to support a community of practices among the stakeholders, virtual seminars, and a permanent virtual fair of results. The concept of the project is to add an intermediate step after research, like a marketing team in the industry.

This “step-further” will be developed closely with the stakeholders, by involving them within a social network. The European Water Community (EWC) is being developed under Waterdiss2.0 project. EWC will promote exchanges between scientists and “end-users” of the FP6/FP7 water research project outputs;

For this, a process, specifically tailored to each of the following target groups is developed:

• the practitioners, with decision-makers (basin authorities, municipalities), and “doers”, (suppliers of technologies, consultancies, operators).

• the researchers, as individual knowledge holders, and as members of European consortiums, and the research funding bodies, at national level.

The solution is a European project, run through the consultancy department of the International Office of Water and funded by the EU FP7 programme.

Consortium: 8 partners from 7 countries

OFFICE INTERNATIONAL DE L’EAU (OIEau) :FR, ECOLOGIC E, GDANSK WATER FOUNDATION (GFW) : PL , CFPPDA: RO, ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER NETWORK (ESKTN):UK, CIRF: IT, AMPHOS21:ES, TRIPNITY: FR.

The project is in its first year and the methodologies are being refined and baseline data gathered. The project will run its first brokerage event at POLLUTEC 2011. A series of events are planned after this and the development and launching of an online commmunity to facilitate exchanges. (Europeanwatercommunity.eu)

The implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and its daughter directives, as well as the Floods Directive, is not a “Business-as-usual approach” and constitutes an exceptional challenge to water managers and governments across Europe. Assessments of the current status of implementation have shown that less than 40% of water bodies will meet the Good Ecological Status in 2015.

Meeting these objectives in the long run will require additional knowledge and know-how in terms of designing measures and management approaches. This knowledge is however to a large extent generated by EU-funded research, but insufficiently applied to address the challenges occurring in the context of WFD implementation.

This concern is shared by many stakeholders, water managers and researchers alike, who have a strong interest in boosting the transfer of research outputs to the real life, like it is shown by the initiative led by some members of the CIS group (WFD Common Implementation Strategy) to run a dedicated SPi (Science-Policy interfacing) working group.

WaterDiss2.0 will speed up the research transfer by identifying the status of development and the level of dissemination of the research outputs. Depending on this assessment, the dissemination strategy will be targeted to a different audience: research community if the results need further development or SMEs and water managers if the results are mature for development but need further demonstration and packaging.

The methodologies and tools to be developed within WaterDiss2.0 will allow speeding up the transfer of research results to the water community. It will reduce the lag time between innovation and implementation of good practice. The cost effectiveness has yet to be measured but should provide a clear improvement in water quality and also in managing water quantity. In the short term the research funders should see an improved utilisation of the projects funded.

The project is working closely with the CIS-SPI ad-hoc activity to provide information to the key stakeholders – the CIS members from the Member States. This means that the work undertaken within the project will feed directly into the key process for its use. This is where the intial work should be replicated. Then once a more long term structure is put in place to manage the wealth of research information available then the scaling up should be targeted to developing a network of science policy experts within each of the member states to create a network within which the quick exchange of information is possible.

Project Coordinator: Gaëlle NION, g.nion@oieau.fr

International Office for Water

15 Rue Eduard Chamberland, Limoges,

France.

+33 555 11 4788