WATER4INDIA

"Smart, Cost-effective Solutions for Water Treatment and Monitoring in Small Communities in India. Decision Support System Integration."

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Fresh water of sufficient quality for human consumption is becoming a scarce resource and its availability is a concerning issue in India whose growing wealth and population create increasing needs leading to higher water consumption while quality standards for drinking water are being enhanced. In this context the overall objective of Water4India consists in studying the different centralized and decentralized options for water treatment at community level in India taking into account resource availability, management, treatment solutions, water quality, economic, environmental and social factors. Water monitoring is of capital importance at each step of the process: different technologies will be considered in the frame of a Water Safety Plan. A Decision Support System (DSS) will be developed based on the previously stated information to assess policy makers take the appropriate decisions to solve the existing problem with drinking water. Water4India will deliver two forms of water availability assessment: the quality and quantity of available water and the resource management with information on current and expected water requirements. The quality of available water will be studied using Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment. The DSS must find the optimal solution considering not only its cost but the overall sustainability of the process, paying particular attention to energy consumption and obtaining for this purpose, the friendliness of the proposed technologies and their adaptation to the social environment. The proposed technologies of the DSS will be applied in two places with different climatic and social situations that will constitute the pilot sites validating the developed work. Finally, a dissemination and best practice step will be carried out in order to define how the results of the project will be communicated to users and guarantee large scale implementation results which can be widely deployed into EU-India water technological business network.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

India's growing wealth and population has resulted in increased water consumption, while quality standards for drinking water are being enhanced. An EU-funded initiative is investigating different options for water treatment at the community level in the country.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The project http://water4india.eu/ (WATER4INDIA) (Smart, cost-effective solutions for water treatment and monitoring in small communities in India. Decision support system integration) has implemented a series of alternative technological solutions for water treatment.

Although the project focuses mainly on decentralised solutions such as small-scale systems and point-of-use technologies, existing centralised technologies will also be considered. The integration of renewable technologies will be examined, especially for small-scale treatment, which will allow drinking water production on a completely decentralised basis.

Project work takes into account resource availability, management, treatment solutions, water quality, and economic, environmental and social factors.

The main objectives are to identify the most vulnerable areas suffering from water scarcity and the needs of communities with regard to available resources and their quality. Researchers will also determine the worthiness of currently applied solutions. These include membrane technology, decentralised membrane distillation and new adsorbents from locally available materials.

Currently applied technologies for producing drinking water at the small scale are being assessed, as are end-user needs. In addition, researchers are assessing and quantifying existing technologies for water quality monitoring to evaluate the quality of raw and treated water and the composition of wastewater.

The project will also develop a decision-support system to help policymakers make appropriate decisions for solving current challenges regarding drinking water. Selected technologies will be considered in the context of a Water Cycle Safety Plan. Technologies will be demonstrated using different scenarios at tests sites and best practice guidelines will be drawn up for end users. The quality of available water will be assessed using quantitative microbial risk assessment.

WATER4INDIA will therefore optimise energy requirements and water availability, and monitor biological and chemical contaminants to give social, economic and environmental benefits.