With over 220 participants and many special moments, Water Innovation Europe 2017 was a smashing success! The WssTP’s annual stakeholder conference dedicated to ‘The Value of water: The case for innovation and investment in water’ took place on the 14 and 15 of June in Brussels and left behind long-lasting impressions!
Jyrki Katainen, EC Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness raised the curtains of the conference, emphasising that water is the key factor for the sustainability of our economy and societies and Claire Pace, President of the European Youth Parliament for Water, closed the conference, with a strong message on the importance of involving the young generation in the future’s challenges and opportunities of the water sector.
Water Innovation Europe 2017 Key messages
The programme of this year’s edition was built upon the main concepts of the new WssTP Water Vision 2030. Distinguished in their field speakers participated in the five different sessions of the agenda and debated on how to boost the future water-smart society, as envisaged in the WssTP Vision. The outcomes emerged out of the panel sessions, speeches and discussions during the WIE2017 conference, can be summarised into the following messages:
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[acc_item title=”Session 1: Innovation and Investment in Water“]
Bringing innovation to the market is a long and challenging process (from technology readiness level 1 to 9), that requires talented people, resources and market pull.
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[acc_item title=”Session 2: Water Smart-Industries“]
Digital transformation requires assessing issues such as open data, data ownership, data value and connectivity spectrum.
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[acc_item title=”Session 3: Water-smart Agriculture“]
It is important to understand the value of Water Stewardship principles for the value chain partners and engage from earliest stage with AWS.[/acc_item]
[acc_item title=”Session 4: Water Smart-Cities“]
The interrelations among the different resources clearly indicate the importance of adopting a nexus approach.
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[acc_item title=”Session 5: Water Smart Governance“]
It is crucial to create strong mechanisms for multi-stakeholder engagement, as water crises are often governance crises.
The key conclusions of WIE2017 will serve as a basis for the preparations of the EIP Water Conference 2017, scheduled for the 27-28 September in Porto.
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WssTP Awards 2017 Dinner Ceremony
The WssTP Awards Dinner Ceremony 2017 was among the top highlights of this year’s conference, during which the EU water sector came together to discover the winners of the WssTP Awards 2017, while enjoying a copious dinner in a great musical setting with the performance of Amaranthus band. Amaranthus is a young and dynamic ensemble that innovates by mixing baroque music with visual art. The winners of the four prize categories of this year’s Awards are
- Vitens, Water Technology & infrastructure Prize
- OPTICITS, SME Prize
- Global Omnium, Digital Water Prize
- DHI, Water Governance Prize
Exhibition
On the main conference day, Water Innovation Europe 2017 conference opened the doors of its exhibition area, with DECHEMA, R3Water, Porto Water Innovation Week and ECOMONDO, participating as exhibitors.
Pre-conference Programme
The WIE2017 pre-conference programme started on the 14th June with the WssTP working groups meetings and continued with a session on successful FP7 and H2020 projects. The participating projects demonstrated how their results will provide concrete solutions that can contribute to the realisation of a water-smart society, as envisioned in the WssTP Water Vision 2030: SIM4NEXUS (CL1- Value of Water), R3Water (CL2 Smart Water Treatment), DAIAD (CL3 Digital Water), FREEWAT (CL4: Value in Water), DEMOWARE (CL5: Hybrid Grey Green Infra), WIDEST (CL6: Water Innovation System). In parallel to that, the annual WssTP General meeting was held, with the elections of the new board for the period 2017-2019.
