Internationale Partnersuche

Innovation & Technologie Angebot

Integrated Water Resource Management: from software to policies

Country of Origin: Belgium
Reference Number: TOBE20190211001
Publication Date: 8 March 2019

Summary

A Belgian academic research center has developed a new integrated water resource management decision support software, used by water management stakeholders and scientists. It takes into account natural and anthropogenic loads to assess impacts on the physicochemical quality of waterbodies and associated ecosystems. The water management is extended to economy, climate change scenarios, demographic trends, growth of anthropic pressures… The center is looking for licence and research agreement.

Description

The software suite is a powerful holistic water management tool assisting water management stakeholders, industries and researchers in the establishment of pressure / impact relationships and in handling complexes forecasting scenarios at various scales (from watershed to international district). It allows decision makers in the water sector to provide measures (management plan) and to forecast associated water quality enhancement. The model is also dedicated to implement the WFD (Water Framework Directive 2000/60/CE) as well as to assist for free release authorization requests and impact studies. Recent new developments extend the model capabilities to assess accidental releases and dynamic coupling to other compartments of water resource management (economy, climate changes, soils loads, hydrogeology, agricultural practices …).The software suite differs from other models in its capabilities of being fully complete in its physically (and mathematically)-based description of all ecosystem processes while being operational and useful by stakeholders themselves (through an ergonomic graphical user interface).

The tool is made available to the market via license agreement, individual studies or project expertise. Types of partners sought are water management stakeholders, consortia, water operators, decision makers and environmental consciousness companies regarding their environmental responsibilities. Actors involved in environmental scientific research are also sought, in order to establish scientific as well as research and development (R&D) cooperations.

Advantages and Innovations

The Belgian research team offers various integrated water resource management tools including, amongst other, a deterministic and physically based modelling software (provided with a graphical user interface), that enable a enhanced holistic description of the hydrological system. The innovation is generated through an acknowledged experience  in the development of technologically advanced software suite helping in integrated water quality management and forecasting. The methodology implies a wide variety of natural and anthropogenic input data: urban, industrial, WWTP [WasteWater Treatment Plants], livestock discharges, and processes … in order to assess physicochemical quality of water bodies.  It is a deterministic non-stationary quality processing engine taking into account various parameters as the anthropogenic impact, corbicula, segmentation and suspended matter, transport of micropollutants, accidental releases, heavy metals, … The modelling processes that reckon physical, chemical and biological factors requires numerous input data assimilated by numerical algorithms and tools. Through a better understanding of the described basin, it also allows to reinforce the monitoring Network as well as the waste water treatment strategies. New developments reinforce its capability to be coupled to additional modules in order to integrate other pressure impact relationships (economic, social, demography, climate changes, groundwater resources, soils loads, agricultural practices …) and the assessment of their associated forecasts.

Stage Of Development

Available for demonstration

Stage Of Development Comment

Downloadable Freeware software (demonstration and usable for first application)

Requested partner

License agreement: 

•	To implement the product into Public administrations, Ministries, Agencies and Industries in order to provide the expertise and technical support as required by the European Commission (WFD) in the scope of water quality management



Research: 

Partnership and/or Joint expertise in developing R&D project,

The research center is open to any type of partner.