How can the world provide high-quality water in a future filled with uncertainty? That is the question at the heart of a new €10 million research project being led by four prominent professors.

Seventy per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050 and coupled with the impacts of climate change, this will accelerate increased water demand. The six-year project will combine expertise in water science, economics, systems & control theory and machine learning to help policymakers better plan drinking water infrastructure.

As water networks become more advanced, with the integration of digital technologies, more data will be generated, leading to large-scale, complex cyber-physical systems. The project will contribute to the design and operation of the next generation of smart water systems.

The four professors leading the Smart Water Futures project come from top universities in UK, Germany, Greece and Cyprus, with researchers form the Netherlands also involved.

Professor Barbara Hammer from the machine learning group at Bielefeld University, Germany said, “We will face problems that will become moving targets due to changes in the environments and demand. We need to devise robust methods to deal with these uncertainties under continuous change.”

The research will link up the short-term decisions that make water utility operations more efficient, together with longer-term thinking to create resilient infrastructure for unpredictable environments. An open-source toolbox will eventually help policymakers to plan their drinking water infrastructure better.

The four professors are:

Dragan Savić, professor of hydroinformatics at the University of Exeter, UK and chief executive of KWR Water Research Institute in the Netherlands.
Barbara Hammer, machine learning group, Bielefeld University, Germany
Phoebe Koundouri, professor of economics at the Athens University of Economics & Business, Greece
Marios Polycarpou, professor of electrical & computer engineering at the University of Cyprus and director of the KIOS Research & Innovation Center of Excellence.

The six-year project will receive a total of €10 million through the European Research Council's Synergy Grant.