intelligent, innovative, integrative Water Systems

forthcoming

The risk of water scarcity due to climate change and human activities is real. i3WaterS stands for Intelligent, Innovative, Integrative Water Systems and addresses the urgent need to optimize water resources management by providing a comprehensive solution to upgrade, optimally operate and maintain water distribution systems (WDSs). For the first time, a unique holistic approach will find the key interrelationships between external, day-to-day and extreme, factors and WDS failures, to advise actions and protocols to make WDSs robust and reliable. At research level, i3WaterS project focuses on the integration of data, specific expert knowledge and computational simulations tools, introducing the most advanced data-driven and artificial intelligent techniques beyond the State of the Art, that plugged in a newly developed intelligent decision support system (IDSSs), working as an umbrella for a set of 14 independent solutions that enables assisting the WDSs management into scientifically driven decision-making. The incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) will help to increase the autonomy of some parts of the WDS, those suitable under a paradigm of maximum security, safety and robustness, and the project will take care to frame this autonomy in a global and general concept of intelligent assistance, including human validation in each steps where it makes sense 15 Doctorate Candidates will learn from a network of experts on network monitoring, data management, algorithms, AI, modeling, microbiology, ethics and industrial partners, and by participating in a specifically designed training programme, they will develop the required cross competencies to find, test and innovate over a solution that will be fundamental to meet the sustainable development goals on water. Just as important, i3WaterS provide a new generation of internationally connected professionals with unique skills for the development of thriving careers in the critical infrastructures.