Strengthening alternative water resource management – RECREATE

Water scarcity is becoming a global issue, exacerbated by climate change, population growth, and disjointed management. Despite the urgency, less than 1% of Europe’s water consumption comes from alternative water resources (AWR), including rainwater, stormwater, and reclaimed wastewater, with conventional resources favored for their cost-effectiveness and perceived reliability. The RECREATE project aims to enhance the resilience of water management. This can only be achieved through the integration of AWR into water management and by building trust in their role in climate change adaptation. This will be realized through a Digital Decision Support Framework, featuring an open-access data repository on water management alternatives, climate impact prediction modules, local adaptation strategies, and a decision matrix for adaptive water management pathways. The tool will be demonstrated in four regional case studies, with a focus on the digitalization of the water cycle and demonstrating the cost efficiency, reliability, and safety of AWR.

adelphi coordinates the communication, dissemination, and exploitation of project results with the aim of maximizing the project's impact and enabling the upscaling and replication of AWR solutions. This also involves exploiting their market potential in the CS regions, which adelphi coordinates as the exploitation manager of the project. Additionally, adelphi will support stakeholder engagement in the project by providing a common approach for mapping stakeholders and supporting the establishment of Communities of Practice (CoPs) in each of the project's CS. Through CoPs, adelphi will gather lessons learned from the CS, feeding into policy recommendations at the EU level.