As climate pressures intensify, the need for smarter and more resilient water management has never been greater. The WATERGRID project tackles this challenge by advancing innovative, scalable solutions that integrate natural processes with cutting-edge technology. The following text outlines how the project will enhance drought resilience, improve water quality, and support sustainable water use across Europe.

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WATERGRID aims to make water systems more resilient to drought, reduce pollution, and ensure sustainable water use for people, nature, and the economy. The project will do this through developing and demonstrating the Smart Water Grid (SWG) concept — a system that connects Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) with smart technologies to manage water across catchments.  

Through demonstration sites, digital tools, stakeholder collaboration, and policy integration, WATERGRID will demonstrate the relevance and significance of SWGs and NBS for enhancing water resilience and create a digital tool and protocol to operationalise SWGs across Europe.   

IIASA will contribute to the protocol and tool development by providing catchment wide predictive modelling using CWatM and PlantFATE. Results from the modelling will be used to aid in planning NBS in demonstration and validation sites.  

 Project Coordinator and Partners

Westcountry Rivers Trust  (COORDINATOR)  Leitat Technological Center Global Omnium   València Innovation Capital  
Slovak University of Agriculture   Ekoenergia  The Energy and Water Agency   Natuurpunt  
Delft University of Technology   aconium GmbH University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU)   Viridian Logic Ltd 
Wageningen University & Research   Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA )   Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL   Technical University of Munich  
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)   Beia Consult International   Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)   ICONS Innovation Strategies  
Euroquality - Tinexta Innovation Hub   Water Europe     
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Funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Programme, Grant Agreement No. 101180636 (WATERGRID). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, European Commission, DG Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.