Digital solutions open up a variety of opportunities for the water sector. Digital water is now seen not as an ‘option’ but as an ‘imperative’ (Sarni et al., 2019) for a more sustainable and secure water management. Many solutions leverage the latest innovations developed across industries and business activities including advanced sensors, data analytics and artificial intelligence. The potential of digitalization might outweigh its associated risk if digital solutions are successfully implemented addressing a series of gaps and barriers such as ICT governance, cybersecurity, data protection, interoperability and capacity building. Within this context, the H2020 innovation project digital-water.city (DWC) aims at boosting the integrated management of waters systems in five major European cities – Berlin, Copenhagen, Milan, Paris and Sofia – by leveraging the potential of data and digital technologies. Goal is to quantify the benefits of a panel of 15 innovative digital solutions and achieve their long-term uptake and successful integration in the existing digital systems and governance processes. One of these promising technology is a new sensor for real-time bacterial measurements, manufactured by the company Fluidion (ALERT System; Angelescu et al., 2019). The device is fully autonomous, remotely controllable, installed in-situ and allows rapid quantification of E.coli and enterococci concentrations.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 820954.