Water quality is the foundation of everything we do with water, from safe drinking supply to reuse and circularity. UrbaQuantum, an EU-funded Horizon Europe project, explores water safety and quality at a micro level, combining novel sensors, artificial intelligence and hydrological models, to best support water management and decision-making for water utilities and policymakers. We spoke with Theofilos Kamperidis, the project’s coordinator, about UrbaQuantum’s vision, the challenges of bringing research and innovation into the water sector, and how better monitoring can unlock smarter water reuse.
So what is the UrbaQuantum project? UrbaQuantum was born out of a gap that Mr.Kamperidis and his colleagues kept encountering in urban water management. Plenty of technologies exist, the problem is that they don’t synergise with each other. “A variety of approaches and various research and technologies have been applied in urban water management, but they have been proven not holistic, let’s say, not integrating enough.” he explains. Submitted under the Horizon Europe Cluster 6 zero- pollution call in 2024, the project is a direct response: “a well-structured attempt at the holistic approach to manage the water.”
The concept rests on three technical pillars. The first is sensing: “many partners have developed throughout the years, from their work and previous projects, sensors that can detect pathogens, pollutants, microplastics.” The second is modelling of urban water flows, by including the critical “interaction between the surface water and the sewers,” since overflows are “an important issue in the countries involved.” The third pillar ties everything together: a platform “which will integrate sensors and artificial intelligence and Internet of Things in order to monitor the quality of urban water flows,” resulting in a decision-support system for water utilities.
The consortium consists of 18 partners from six countries “a Europe-wide effort,” as Kamperidis puts it, and the approach will be validated in four real- world case studies, in Greece, Spain, France and the United Kingdom. The ambition, however, reaches beyond technology, aiming to “contribute to the ecological balance, contribute to the proper water usage and basically reduce the loss of fresh water,” and ultimately to “assist policymakers and help the development of a framework” for applying the UrbaQuantum approach at a much wider scale.
Ensuring uptake by local authorities and public utilities
For any decision-support tool, the hardest part is not building it, but getting the intended users to trust it. UrbaQuantum’s answer is to build the platform in collaboration with its end users, rather than for them. Some of Europe’s largest water operators sit inside the consortium. This proximity is deliberate. “We involve the people who will make these future decisions on the usage of such tools already on the table. We consult them, show them the results, in order to have a better validation procedure”.
The challenges of R&I uptake in the water sector
Asked about the barriers between European research and the water market, Kamperidis is refreshingly candid. The first challenge is the sector’s sheer heterogeneity: “There is a great variety of issues spanning along the various water utility companies in the European countries.” A solution designed for one context does not automatically fit another.
The second is engagement. What worries him most is “limited interest, or no interest, from the public side” and “limited collaboration with players which are not part of the consortium or the network we already have”, in other words, the risk of “not having the response we expect in the dissemination activities”. Then there is the cost. UrbaQuantum’s sensing relies on advanced optics, and “the photonic technologies, generally speaking, may be proven also expensive in some cases, which may hinder the whole business exploitation idea.”
The project’s counterweight is accumulated experience. “This work is not a standalone project. The whole concept and approach have been developed and refined through a variety of current and past research projects”.
Supporting the uptake of water reuse technologies
Where does a monitoring project fit into water circularity? Kamperidis frames UrbaQuantum’s role as the intelligence layer that makes water reuse decisions possible in the first place. “It supports and helps you decide what you’re going to do,” he explains.
Kamperidis offers a concrete scenario: a wastewater treatment plant in Athens where there is a contamination. UrbaQuantum’s sensors will detect it, and the Urban Water Decision-Support Platform will analyse the data, compare it with similar case studies and suggest a course of action, supporting decision-makers in more informed water management. The link to water reuse follows naturally. Depending on the quality monitoring, the platform might flag that there is water contamination in areas, upstream or downstream of your facilities and suggest how the emergency should be handled.
