Focus on The ICT4Water Cluster “Actor Awareness” Action Group

The ICT4Water cluster is a hub for EU-funded research and innovation projects dealing with ICT applied to water management. The cluster main mission is to promote and support projects addressing water challenges by using digital solutions. The cluster brings approximately 50 projects and support them to (i) Exchange information and best practices, (ii) Disseminate and exploit project outputs, (iii) Contribute to defining digital water strategies, (iv) Contribute to policy development in digital and water domain.

Following the ICT4Water Cluster Action Plan (2018), 7 Action Groups has been created in order to respond the various actions and activities: Action Group “Interoperability & Standardization” - Action Group “Data Sharing” - Action Group “Cyber Security” - Action Group “Actor Awareness” - Action Group “Policy” - Action Group “Business Models” - Action Group “Smart Water”.

The Action Group “Actor Awareness”, co-led by Christos Markopoulos (NTUA) and Gilles Neveu (OIEAU), focuses on the implementation of three main actions: (i) define, (ii) develop and (iii) promote new digital water skills, labor markets, training and education systems. The ambition is to fit for the digital age, raise awareness for water actors, considering cross-actor interactions, and progress in digital water consumer awareness.

In order to achieve these actions, the action group aims to (i) showcase digital water success stories, ideas, concepts and technologies, (ii) promote collaboration and co-learning between water actors around digital water, (iii) enhance digital water consumer awareness, dialogue and service provision and (iv) develop the new digital water skills and partnerships that will guarantee further development and sustainability for the sector.

Some of the activities have already been initiated through various projects, such as Fiware4Water, which pilots some of the ideas of the Action group (open data, competitions open to SMEs tech developers, etc.).

The Actor Awareness Action Group is now on the process of identification and exploration of the different solutions and actions carried out by all the project members of the cluster concerning Actors Raising Awareness, such as: serious gaming, training, digital hubs or iHubs development, Smart Regions etc.

The next step will be to link these various initiatives and thus, to create a digital water community.

Contact: Sonia Siauve, s.siauve@oieau.fr, OIEau

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