The Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy has started a new collaboration with European partners in the new Horizon Europe project: WaterWise Hub (An Excellence Hub on Water in Circular Economy).
The Centre for Water Systems (CWS) at Department of Engineering and the Centre for Simulation, Analytics and Modelling (CSAM) at the Business School are contributing the expertise on circular economy, modelling, data analytics and visualisation, stakeholder engagement to the Waterwise Hub.
Prof Albert Chen will be leading the Exeter team, supported by Profs Slobodan Djordjevic, Dragan Savic, and Dr Lydia Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia at the CWS, and Prof Nav Mustafee at CSAM, in the collaboration with the Waterwise Hub consortium. Drs Mehdi Khoury and Kate Baker, and Gareth Lewis at the CWS will also participate in the project.
The WaterWise Hub enables us further sharing the knowledge from our recent EU project NextGen and ULTIMATE on water and circular economy with wider audiences, the collaboration will support partners from the Widening countries strengthening the research and innovation capacities to reach Net Zero.
Prof Albert Chen
One key objective of the hub is to map the policy landscape and identify technology innovations at a high technology readiness level (TRL). Prof Nav Mustafee said, “The assessment of policies around circular and distributed water innovations in the Widening countries will allow us to identify the current challenges faced by some of the partners in the implementation of circular water solutions; further, the hub will facilitate the sharing of knowledge from partners who have existing EU-level expertise and provide recommendations of the most promising innovations to partners in our focus partnership area.”
The WaterWise Hub project has gathered experts 21 institutions across Greece, Romania, Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine, Netherlands and the UK to create a hub to accelerate research and innovation on water reuse and circular economy. The kick-off meeting was held on 13 and 14 February at the Eugenides Foundation in Athens to mark the new partnership in the next 48 months.
The WaterWise Hub is funded by the European Union, as part of HORIZON WINDERA 2023 ACCESS 07 call (GA 101184151). The University of Exeter’s involvement is supported by the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee Funding (10147967).