digital-water.city’s (DWC) main goal is to boost the integrated management of waters systems in five major European urban and peri-urban areas, Berlin, Milan, Copenhagen, Paris and Sofia, by leveraging the potential of data and smart digital technologies. DWC will create linkages between the digital and the physical worlds by developing and demonstrating 18 advanced digital solutions to address current and future water-related challenges; namely the protection of human health, the increase of performance and return on investment of water infrastructures and the involvement of citizens in urban water management. Areas of application of DWC digital solutions range from groundwater management, sewer maintenance and operation, wastewater treatment and reuse to urban bathing water management. DWC combines cutting-edge digital technologies such as augmented reality, open source software, cloud computing, real-time sensors, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and decision support systems. DWC integrates the development of digital solutions in a dedicated guiding protocol to cover the existing gaps regarding ICT governance, interoperability, ontology and cybersecurity. Ultimately, DWC will provide an interoperable free flow of information among stakeholders and across the water value chain. DWC will generate the necessary conditions for co-creation and open innovation by the establishment of Community of Practices aiming at integrating stakeholder knowledge, ensuring the transferability of the digital solutions in other European or international contexts, supporting knowledge transfer beyond DWC and creating durable binding between European cities. The large scale assessment and communication of the benefits provided by the digital solutions in five major cities will serve as lighthouse, raising the awareness of European cities for a necessary digital transformation, and opening new market opportunities for DWC partners and European providers of digital solutions.

Numerous emerging micropollutants (e.g., personal care products, antibiotics, endocrine disruptors) are found in urban waters but their transformation and behavior in wastewater treatment plants and in the urban environment are not well characterized. Current workflows for the non-targeted analysis of organic micropollutants by high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) are complex and time-consuming. The aim of this 4-year project is to develop a comprehensive approach for the characterization of organic micropollutants in urban waters by HRMS, by (1) providing an innovative protocol for the extraction and analysis of both polar and non-polar compounds from urban waters; (2) developing data treatment methods and global indices derived from HRMS fingerprints; and (3) applying chemometrics/omics methods for data analyses of urban water samples in conjunction with toxicity analyses, with a focus on the characterization of polar molecules. The achievement of these objectives will provide advances in workflows for the detection of micropollutants using non-targeted analyses. It will allow the potential identification of new classes of chemicals, metabolites and degradation products, and the categorization of products based on several indices (e.g., molecular formula, hydrophilicity/polarity, type of degradation mechanism). Developing specific indices to characterize families of compounds will help getting faster results from HRMS measurements, without reducing the level of details obtained by HRMS analysis. The originality of the WaterOmics project lies in this global approach, by avoiding the time-consuming and complex steps of molecular structure identification. This approach will be tested through the evaluation of performances of advanced wastewater treatment processes towards the elimination of organic micropollutants. Micropollutant transformation during various oxidation processes (ozonation, UV photolysis, chlorination, peracids) will be studied at the lab-scale and pilot-scale. The performance of major wastewater treatment plants of the Paris conurbation will also be evaluated for the removal of micropollutants. Results will provide remediation strategies to limit the impact of micropollutants on the environment. An important sampling program in wastewater plants, discharges and urban rivers will be performed in collaboration with a major wastewater plant operator (SIAAP). The long-term impacts of urban water discharges in the environment will be followed, and multiple HRMS fingerprints from various urban waters (i.e., wastewater, runoff and fresh waters) will be acquired in a database. The validation of methods and indices and their robustness by investigating a broad range of water matrices will be essential. Relationships between classes of urban contaminants and the toxicity of samples will be established to get a comprehensive view of the exposome from urban water samples. This project will provide innovative tools to characterize and monitor the behavior of organic compounds in water systems and their toxic impacts, which will benefit to the water community, from researchers to operational institutions and industrial structures involved in water management and treatment.

Microscopic plastic debris, so-called microplastics (MP), pose a global challenge. As most plastic is produced and used inland, the considerable lack of knowledge on their sources and impacts in freshwater ecosystems inhibits effective mitigation measures. To meet this challenge, LimnoPlast will for the first time bring together environmental, technical, and social sciences with the vision to transform a new understanding of freshwater MP to innovative solutions. LimnoPlast will: - Train a new type of scientists able to tackle the complex plastics issue holistically and contribute to Europe’s innovation and Circular Economy capacity. Working at the interface of three usually very distant disciplines, they will promote a step change in how we deal with this and future environmental challenges. - Provide the first comprehensive assessment of the sources and impacts of freshwater MP based on the analysis of three major urban areas as hotspots of plastic pollution. - Innovate technological solutions to the plastics issue, including novel processes to remove MP from municipal and industrial wastewater as well as bio-degradable, environmentally sound polymers. - Promote societal change by understanding the economic, legislative and social context of freshwater MP. - Transform science into a set of specific solutions, including (I) the prioritization of actions based on the sources and impacts of MP, development of (II) better processes and polymers, (III) risk communication strategies and societal interventions, (IV) effective policy and legislative interventions. - Transfer the LimnoPlast outcomes to European decision makers, stakeholders and the public to enable and promote action on freshwater MP using an innovative communication and dissemination strategy.