The aim of SARASWATI 2.0 is to identify best available and affordable technologies for decentralized wastewater treatment with scope of resource/energy recovery and reuse in urban and rural areas. Further, it addresses the challenge of real time monitoring and automation. The previous SARASWATI project has shown that a number of decentralized wastewater treatment plants in India do not perform properly and that there are few plants that would meet the more stringent standards as those proposed by the Indian Government in 2015. Thus, in many cases not even CATNAP (the cheapest available technology narrowly avoiding prosecution) has been applied, leading to high pollution levels. The SARASWATI project therefore proposed to adopt the principle of BAT (best available technologies) in a more flexible way, adapting the definition of BAT to the local context, based on complementing the treatment efficiency with the costs of the treatment technology and affordability, and local context in the location of application. This will allow to identify BATs with more stringent standards if required and suitable for the location. Thereby, ten pilot technologies in 7 Indian States demonstrating enhanced removal of organic pollution (BOD, TSS), nutrients (particularly Nitrogen), organic micro-pollutants and pathogens have been proposed (WP1). Further, all pilots allow for resource recovery contributing to the principles of a circular economy and will undergo a comprehensive performance assessment (WP2) complemented by an extended sustainability assessment informed by recent ISO standards (WP4). This will allow identification of BATs for the Indian context. In addition, suitable automation and control strategies will be tested and recommended, taking into account the presence of operators and their level of knowledge and expertise (WP3). Finally, WP5 is dedicated to dissemination and exploitation of results. The consortium is comprised of a well-balanced EU-Indian team of 17 partners.

The increased demand for drinking water from habited zones combined with continued pollution of freshwater sources due to inadequate collection and treatment of wastewater, is a statement of challenge and also a window of opportunity common to India and Europe. Unlike in Europe, the water and sanitation scenario in developing countries like in India is a matter of serious concern and more challenging. The main aim of this project is to validate, deploy or develop cost-effective & sustainable solutions to tackle water challenges and ensure the provision of safe water reuse, rejuvenate water quality of rivers, and restore ecosystems in India. This will be achieved by deploying & developing water / wastewater technologies, and use of sensors for emerging and traditional contaminants. Further, it also aims to develop new management & planning strategies and enable better monitoring of pollution levels in real-time modes. This will not only contribute to the development of sustainable technologies to cope with water shortages in rural and urbanised areas in India, but also in Europe, where climate change is expected to induce a changing and uncertain precipitation pattern and an enhancement in temperature. It will assess and enhance the potential of natural and technical water treatment systems to suit the local hydro-geological conditions. Moreover, the projects will assess and validate different wastewater and water management plans. Besides the technical aspects, research will also cover financial, environmental and institutional sustainability of those systems in order to develop and bring to the market a cost-efficient multi-barrier water management approach by building capacity.