Press release | 16.03.2017
Cities put social network benefits to use in water management
A new idea of four cities on World Water Day on 22 March
Frankfurt am Main, 16 March 2017. The idea: A Digital Social Network supports cities and waterworks when handling with water. The four pilot cities of Jerusalem, Milton Keynes, Leicester and Sabadell work on this. They are developing and testing solutions for dealing with water issues with an EU project called POWER (Political and sOcial awareness on Water EnviRonmental challenges), in which the European city network Climate Alliance is also involved. No matter whether clean drinking water is scarce, or the region is threatened by floods, the POWER initiative is developing a user-driven Digital Social Platform to engage with stakeholders, improve governance of existing water networks, raise awareness and develop policy initiatives.
Jerusalem (Israel) lies in a semi-arid climate zone and has to cope with little water. The Regional Water Utility Hagihon manages water quality as well as water pressure and flow with its active management. The main focus of the city is to promote water conservation behaviours, quantifiable water savings and improved awareness regarding water quality.
In Milton Keynes (UK) water is scarce, too. Therefore, with the help of social awareness incentives, the total consumption should be reduced.
Leicester (UK) is endangered by surface water floods. Therefore, the city aims to strengthen the awareness of extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, by providing real-time river water levels and predictive warnings for combined sewer overflows in specific geographical areas of the city.
In Sabadell (Spain) water is delivered in two qualities, as drinking water and non-drinking water. The water utility CASSA wants to involve the citizens actively by implementing an information system that enables real-time information about the quality and conditions of service.
The Digital Social Platform is in the process of being populated with data and will go public in the summer of 2017. Then everyone can benefit from the experience, knowledge and information of the pilot cities. If you want to keep up to date with progress, you can subscribe to the project newsletter free of charge.
You can find further information about the EU project POWER here.
Project funded by the European Commission under the H2020 Programme, Call ICT10-2015 ‘Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation’.
