INTCATCH will instigate a paradigm shift in the monitoring and management of surface water quality that is fit for global waters in the period 2020-2050. INTCATCH will do this by developing efficient, user-friendly water monitoring strategies and systems based on innovative technologies that will provide real time data for important parameters, moving towards SMART Rivers. The business model will transform water governance by facilitating sustainable water quality management by community groups and NGOs using a clouds data linked to a decision support system and eco-innovative technologies. The INTCATCH project will use demonstration activities to showcase eco-innovative autonomous and radio controlled boats, sensors, DNA test kits and run-off treatment technologies. Actions which develop and evaluate these in a range of catchments will address the important innovation barriers to uptake, notably, a lack of knowledge of new technologies and their capabilities, identified by the European Innovation Plan (EIP) on water. By conceptually moving the laboratory to the ‘field’, the monitoring techniques that will be developed aim to supersede the inefficient, time dependent, costly and labour-intensive routine sampling and analysis procedures currently deployed to understand the quality of receiving waters. It will compliment routine monitoring that is required for baseline datasets, but also enable cost-effective impact and management investigations. INTCATCH will incentivise stakeholder innovation in monitoring and will facilitate new financing for innovation through its innovative franchise business model and empowerment of community groups and NGOs. The market ambition is that the INTCATCH business will facilitate an eco-innovative approach to deliver good quality water bodies across Europe and beyond. This will support green growth, increase resilience to climate change and capture greater market-share for Europe’s innovative industries.

SMART-Plant will scale-up in real environment eco-innovative and energy-efficient solutions to renovate existing wastewater treatment plants and close the circular value chain by applying low-carbon techniques to recover materials that are otherwise lost. 7+2 pilot systems will be optimized fore > 2 years in real environment in 5 municipal water treatment plants, inclunding also 2 post-processing facilities. The systems will be authomatisedwith the aim of optimizing wastewater treatment, resource recovery, energy-efficiency and reduction of greenhouse emissions. A comprehensive SMART portfolio comprising biopolymers, cellulose, fertilizersand intermediates will be recoveredand processed up to the final commercializable end-products. The integration of resource recovery assets to system-wide asset management programs will be evaluated in each site following the resource recovery paradigm for the wastewater treatment plant of the future, enabled through SMART-Plant solutions. The project will prove the feasibility of circular management of urban wastewater and environmental sustainability of the systems, to be demonstrated through Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing approaches to prove the global benefit of the scaled-up water solutions. Dynamic modeling and superstructure framework for decision support will be developed and validated to identify the optimum SMART-Plant system integration options for recovered resources and technologies.Global market deployment will be achieved as right fit solution for water utilities and relevant industrial stakeholders, considering the strategic implications of the resource recovery paradigm in case of both public and private water management. New public-private partnership models will be explored connecting the water sector to the chemical industry and its downstream segments such asthe contruction and agricultural sector, thus generating new opportunities for funding, as well as potential public-private competition.