GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

In line with the ambition of the EU zero pollution action plan there is a need to develop an integrated and harmonised approach to monitor all sources of surface and groundwater pollution and their impact, including micro-pollutants, micro-plastics, pharmaceuticals and other contaminant of emerging concerns, as well as mixtures of pollutants.

An advanced monitoring and control system, going beyond the conventional pollutants, linking drinking and wastewater urban cycles, integrating risk management approaches and exploiting upgraded digital solutions to support urban water quality management, should be developed and tested, combined with appropriate modelling tools and scenarios to assess and forecast the long-term impacts of future changing socio-economic and climatic conditions on water quality. This monitoring system should consider the overall monitoring and outlook requirements of the EU zero pollution action plan, the monitoring requirements of existing EU water policy legislation (e.g., Water Framework Directive, Drinking Water Directive , Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, Bathing Water Directive, etc.) and relevant national and/or European water quality monitoring tools, and develop recommendations and guidance to strengthen the implementation of the EU and/or national legislation. It should allow to identify cause-effect relationships and big data management to address quality pressures For this purpose there is a need to develop better methods to access chemical data to be able to track the use or the flows of chemicals in urban areas (e.g., to support case studies using mass balance approach to clarify hotspots of pollution sources). New and refined analytical tools and monitoring methods (e.g. effect-based monitoring, biological monitoring) to analyse broad spectrum of contaminants of emerging concerns should be also developed. Recommendations for the standardisation of monitoring and identification of contaminants (including detection limit) should be also provided.

To enhance the capabilities of real-time monitoring of water quality, the potential of earth observations technologies and the use of digital technologies, such as online sensors, artificial intelligence, digital twins, digital data spaces, etc. should be further explored and consolidated.

Deadline dates: 21 February 2024 17 September 2024