Award Project: Innovation and Research

Alternative water resources: the AWARD project

Alternative WAter Resources and Deliberation processes to renew water supply strategic planning

In light of growing water scarcity and the impacts of climate change, CAP is aware of the urgency of actively contributing to strategic water planning.

The AWARD project stems from need to actively involve the society, scientists and policy-makers in the creation of informed knowledge. AWARD is a three-year project funded by the European Commission's Horizon Europe Programme with the aim of developing and integrating alternative, reliable and acceptable water resources into water supply planning. To achieve this goal, AWARD plans to install, manage and monitor technological systems on Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) facilities.

Brief information

Project	Details
Project Start	January 2024
Project End	December 2026 (ongoing)
Topic	Hydraulic invariance, climate change
Funding	SI (Horizon Europe)

What are Nature-Based Solutions?

All interventions that use nature and the natural functions of healthy ecosystems to address environmental and climate change challenges, with a particular focus on sustainable urban drainage.

The project will contribute to:

providing recommendations on alternative water sources in the context of scarcity, ensuring the quality of the resource for specific uses;
increase knowledge and acceptance of alternative water resource management systems through case studies in different environmental, social and economic contexts.
increase the market potential of alternative water resources.
create decision-making tools to compare conventional and alternative water resources for strategic water supply planning;
developing commitment and social trust in alternative management methods;

It is also important to raise public awareness of climate change and trigger behavioural change. To this end, various local events will be organised and tools for engagement and dissemination will be designed, including through the media.

The four case studies

Rainwater management and groundwater recharge (Romania); rainwater management and groundwater recharge (Italy); water reuse for irrigation (Cyprus); rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge (Spain).

CAP participates in the project alongside other Italian partners, Metropolitan City of Milan and Iridra, for the case study on the low-cost monitoring of the impact of sustainable drainage interventions implemented during the LIFE Metro Adapt project.

Rainwater management and groundwater recharge (Romania)
Rainwater management and groundwater recharge (Italy)
Water reuse for irrigation (Cyprus)
Rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge (Spain).

Expected results

The main objective of the AWARD project is to raise awareness and foster the integration of accessible, socially acceptable and reliable sustainable alternative water resource (AWR) solutions. The expected results are ambitious but can be achieved with commitment and collaboration from all stakeholders involved. For this reason, AWARD brings together a consortium of 14 partners and 2 affiliated bodies from 7 European countries.

AWARD Project