The European Commission has a set of rules aiming to achieve good water quality of rivers, lakes and groundwater, named Water Framework Directive [1]. To follow these rules, reliable assessment of water quality is crucial. This allows decision-makers to understand, interpret and use the information to protect water resources. However, it is also a complex issue since it involves several fields and requirements: scientific and administrative requirements, stakeholders and policy action plans.
The steps needed for it to succeed are identified as the definition of actual monitoring objectives and sample sites, the definition of water quality parameters and sampling frequencies [2].
How can that be achieved?
It has been pointed out that a tool that can assist and connect all the involved parts mentioned above would be a great value instrument [2]. This could be a decision support system that would provide information about the water quality. For that, sensors can be a useful way to obtain information about defined parameters and when using optical fibre sensors, these would add the advantages of the optical fibres, such as the immunity to electromagnetic fields, small size and weight and allow the production of low cost systems [3].
How is Mar2Protect Project contributing to the water quality?
At Mar2Protect project, funded from the European Union under the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation program, a holistic approach is being developed: it incorporates fields such as chemistry, physics, social sciences, and biology. This integrated approach will aim the prevention of groundwater contamination using several technologies such as the removal and degradation strategies, the development of real time integrated sensing that will be connected to a platform, a decision support tool to bring together information from the different sensors and the use of diagnostic and prediction tools to support policy makers. The design of societal engagement actions is also a constant in the project and one example is the development of the Living Labs concept in each demo site, where it is expected to raise civil society awareness and trigger changes in the daily practices bearing in mind the climate change and global warming issues [4].
Experts from different countries are involved: FCT NOVA Portugal (project coordinator), Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) Portugal, UNIBO Italy, KTU Lithuania, SU South Africa, CETAQUA Andalucía Spain, CIIMAR Portugal, IHE DELFT Netherlands, ISSBAT Tunisia, FEU Spain, and AQUATEC Spain (affiliated with CETAQUA Andalucía). The Instituto de Telecomunicações is leader of the work package related to the approaches for the monitoring of water contamination and the outcome of the project is intended to be a support tool for policy makers [4].
Follow the link at IT news and the project website to stay up do date with the latest news.
Blog Post Contribution
I would like to acknowledge the blog post participation of the local coordinator Dr Rogério Nogueira.
Words About Science 