Fiware4Water social stakeholders' engagement methodology

FIWARE4WATER, is concerned with the concept of digital water in smart communities and seeks to create in-depth engagement with all members of the Quadruple Helix; the public sector, the private sector, the research sector and the citizen in order to achieve a broader social understanding and, subsequently, a long-term political and economic continuity of open technology application.

Such actions are being undertaken at a municipal level. The importance of local administrations has been acknowledged by the most relevant supranational entities who have admitted that stakeholders within cities, towns and villages can prove to be more effective implementers of global policies than their national counterparts and, in contrast to national administrations, they have proved capable of interacting more freely with their municipal counterparts in other countries.

An obstacle to successful innovation has been an inability on the part of researchers and `politicians to enter into a sustained mutually-beneficial dialogue. Such a dialogue is vital if research is to prove valid for the real needs of society. FIWARE4WATER is working to bridge the gap. All citizens, all institutions and all business ventures form part of one municipality or another. Local councils, have the ability to establish direct interaction and therefore effective engagement with the people.

In the example of water, it is true that local governments are not always the owners of the utilities which supply water. More often than not, municipal councillors will have little or no say in said supply. Nevertheless, these elected representatives do have a vital role to play in the co-creation of a long-term vision for a sustainable future by employing enabling technologies. They are able to promote a broad social awareness, and as a result, participation in the formulation of water-based policies established on a solid foundation of public consensus. It is the citizen, the householder, the end-user, the customer and the voter who is the principal target of the socio-political work being implemented by FIWARE4WATER. Within FIWARE4WATER the concept of the engagement methodology named the Council of Citizen Engagement in Sustainable Urban Strategies (ConCensus) has been defined and will be applied first in the UK in the area of South-West Water during the course of 2020 before being disseminated to and replicated by municipalities in Eastern Europe and the Near East.

The combination of an advanced technical data capacity with the comprehension and support of the hitherto uninformed layperson will signify an important step towards the implementation and continuity of local, environmentally-sustainable policies and management practices designed to overcome global challenges.

Author : Eurecat