Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - WATERINNEU (Applying European market leadership to river basin networks and spreading of innovation on water ICT models, tools and data)

Teaser

WaterInnEU has identified technological needs of the water sector by means of consulting involved actors in River Basin Management and has turned them into requirements for the developed solution (the marketplace), aimed at promoting innovative solutions to establish suitable...

Summary

WaterInnEU has identified technological needs of the water sector by means of consulting involved actors in River Basin Management and has turned them into requirements for the developed solution (the marketplace), aimed at promoting innovative solutions to establish suitable conditions for new market opportunities.

The main project objectives have been:
• Aggregate and screen the outcomes of previous European funded projects, and actively promote their dissemination and exploitation as an instrument for supporting the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
• Assess the level of standardization and interoperability of these outcomes as a mechanism to integrate ICT-based tools, and incorporate open data platforms and generate a palette of interchangeable components that are able to use the water data emerging from the data sharing processes and data models stimulated by initiatives such as the INSPIRE directive.
• Offer an independent marketplace a forum formed by water research projects representatives, stakeholders in the water domain, and companies (in particular SMEs), who are capable of moving current products into the market and offer them to, for example, river basin managers, at different levels

The WateInnEU issues and gaps addressed are:
• Poor dissemination of the outcomes of some EU funded projects
• Poor commercialization of the products and services generated in EU funded projects.
• Low level of interoperability of water modelling tools, missing standardization in data and metadata for a better integration into a multidisciplinary approach.
• Limited access to data from researchers and general citizens. Much far from an Open Data scenario.

Work performed

A review and qualification of the current availability of water data and metadata at the European level has been conducted, including: identification of companies and their offerings ready for market introduction, checking previous EU funded initiatives dealing with water management, screening and prioritisation, linkages with the market requirements, preparation of inventory with data sources, companies and solutions, dealing with the demand-side.
On the basis of a broad scan of the European stakeholders\' landscape, key stakeholders were identified to be informed on the potential of the marketplace. Through surveys and interview processes a clear set of requirements and indicators to implement an intuitive user-friendly information portal and marketplace were defined.
Support was provided in the brokering of introductions between relevant parties, as well as facilitation of follow up discussions to encourage uptake of the new innovations. The key mechanisms employed to achieve these outcomes were: the Marketplace, stakeholder meetings, Young Professionals Competition, two E-Pitch events, publication of regular newsletters and bespoke communications.
Current standards and tools in water sector have been examined and the level of interoperability between them assessed, describing a strategy to make progress and increase the level of interoperability. A standardisation label has been proposed to identify the level of standardisation of water products and solutions. A River Basin Interoperability Experiment (RiBasE) has been executed, aimed at developing a solution for integrating data from different heterogeneous sources into a centralized hydrological model execution.
The WaterInnEU Marketplace shows a proof of concept for an innovative knowledge exchange platform in the water management domain. A key new benefit of the new platform is the openness for collaborative content creation and room to phrase opinions and discuss within a community of practice. The prototype has been implemented to address the requirements identified in the other work packages. It has been presented to stakeholders workshops in the case study revier basins and to the advisory board; a feedback has been considered in the second phase of the project.
The information and data gathered in previous WPs were used to develop training materials in order to carry out different e-learning courses.
2 pilot use case studies have been used to test the efficiency and benchmark the marketplace with some specific participants and needs: Maritsa and Scheldt.

The main project outcomes are:
• The marketplace portal: https://marketplace.waterinneu.org
• The marketplace API: https://marketplace.waterinneu.org/en/api
• The marketplace database: products, projects and organisations.
• The marketplace source code, in GitHub: https://github.com/52North/waterinneu
• E-learning courses: https://marketplace.waterinneu.org/en/e-learning and http://www.waterinneu.org/deliverables/Contents_e-learning.zip
• Servers and clients into the OGC Interoperability Pilot; the main outcomes are
o WPS server: http://www.ogc.uab.cat/cgi-bin/WaterInnEU/MiraMon.cgi
o WFS server: http://62.82.217.38:8080/geoserver/web/
o WPS client: http://www.ogc.uab.cat/WPS/WaterInneu/client/
o Pub/Sub client: https://wieu-eventing.herokuapp.com/
• Set of deliverables with learned lessons in the project and recommendations by stakeholders, end-users, advisory board, etc.: http://www.waterinneu.org/documents.html

Final results

WaterInnEU has contributed to the following impacts:
• Enhanced science- and evidence-based decision making in the field of water: by providing the appropriate channels (Marketplace) to ensure the flow of information and the knowledge interchange between science (projects and researchers) and decision makers. All the inputs of the marketplace are based on scientific results obtained in research projects.
• Application of best management practices and new developments to address needs and opportunities in the water field: the Marketplace facilitates a feedback system that allows for the evaluation of the tools and methodologies as well as of the experiences and practices of management. The project has developed pilot case studies that have contributed to check the performance of the project innovations.
• Enhanced interface between water and innovation policies: the participation in the marketplace of decision makers or managers in the water field ensures the application of innovation policies by the access to the latest ones in the technology market and by the contact with other use cases to exchange experiences and progress together.
• Rapid market uptake of research results: the permanent contact of the participants in the marketplace guarantees the rapid access to the latest research results and these are transferred quickly to the companies and the managers to be applied. The promotion of standards within the project accelerates the launching onto the market of the research outcomes, thanks to the degree of interoperability achieved.
• A more integrated community of researchers and users extending across disciplines, countries, organisations and sectors: the Marketplace includes all kind of users and participants, mainly researchers, companies, managers and organizations, with any kind of relation with water and with no nationality restriction. The promotion of standards within the project also improves the interchange of the tools and the flow of experiences within the community of researchers and users.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.waterinneu.org.