Project objectives:
Climate change, population growth and migration, increasing urbanisation and ageing infrastructure are all expected to impose significant strains on urban water systems in Europe and elsewhere over the coming decades. Cities across the continent will experience increasingly frequent shortfalls in the supply and demand balance, particularly during the summer months. More intense rainfall events will lead to local flooding of properties and transport systems and to pollution of receiving waters. Sustainable solutions to these challenges need to be sensitive to long-term investment needs, but also to increasing energy prices, demands for low carbon intensity solutions, and the need to reduce gas emissions from urban activities.
Innovative tools, technologies and management options are needed to ensure more sustainable urban water services regimes. An extended understanding of the performance of contemporary urban water services will allow detailed exploration of transition pathways.
Our work provides research-driven innovations in governance, modelling concepts, technologies and novel approaches to integrated water, energy, and infrastructure asset management. TRUST outcomes will be incorporated into planning guidelines and decision support tools, will be subject to life-cycle assessment and be shaped by regulatory considerations as well as potential environmental, economic and social impacts.
TRUST will produce a variety of different products and outcomes, ranging from scientific reports and reviews, training material, different types of models and tools to technological and managerial innovations. All deliverables will be presented in the news and results & downloads section.
The main expected impacts of TRUST are to ensure long-term environmental safety and welfare for which the efficient use of resources is a key requisite. Research should promote the uptake of sustainable technologies, products and services through e.g. renewable energy, low carbon and resource efficient products. We believe that outputs from the project will catalyse transformatory change in both the form and management of urban water services and give water utilities increased confidence to specify innovative solutions to a range of pressing challenges.
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Project
Summary:
Transitions to the Urban Water Services of Tomorrow (TRUST) is a integrated research project funded by the European Union (FP7 programme). Over the course of four years and driven by the need of transformation and the wish to protect natural resources, 30 partners in eleven different countries will research innovations and tools to create a more sustainable water future. The results will be implemented and tested in nine participating different pilot cities or regions, grouped in green cities, water scarcity regions and urban/peri-urban metropolitan areas. All the information and products resulting from the project will be made available in the TRUST-website.
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