March 2021 |
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ICT4Water Quarterly Newsletter |
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Note from the editor
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2021. This year we start with thematic newsletters, giving more visibility to our Action Groups. The themes of this edition are Cybersecurity and Interoperability & Standardization. Both Action Groups share their activities, results and plans for the near future.
Next to the articles from the Action Groups, this edition includes contributions from our member projects iBathwater, NAIADES, PrimeWater, ULTIMATE, intelWATT and ZERO BRINE. You can also find a short report of the DW2020 webinar on Data Models and the workshop "Synergies of H2020 Digital water projects" organised by EASME.
We hope you enjoy this edition of the newsletter and stay tuned for news on the ICT4Water cluster event later this year.
Stay safe. The ICT4Water team
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Action Group Interoperability and Standardisation
Standardization and Interoperability towards a water-smart society and economy: the story so far
One of the objectives of the water sector is to create a paradigm shift from traditional water management towards a more inclusive and transparent sector. Within this process, the digitalisation of the sector implies to make the society part of this transformation and therefore, introduce them into the water economy. To generate reliable water-smart digital services for society, data management and subsequent interpretation are essential. There is a challenge to avoid data misinterpretation and therefore, establish common strategies to collect and explore water data openly.
This challenge is even more remarkable when different value chains (water distribution, waste-water, abstraction/treatment, etc.) are involved as happens in the water sector. To overcome these aspects, the Interoperability and Standardization (I&S) Action Group of the ICT4Water cluster aims at promoting and providing interoperability and standard mechanism to facilitate transparent data sharing inside the water sector and also, at the nexus level according to their interrelated domains.
Specifically, the I&S Action group (Figure 1) is mainly focused on promoting open standards and common data exchange mechanisms to homogenise the interpretation of water data. Derived from this, the action group is devoted to collect and share success stories in relation to data interoperability. From this, the action group will open new data economy opportunities in terms of data sharing across platforms and establish the base towards cross-domain decision making. A latter objective is to move from open data standards towards linked information knowledge graphs to connect all information and interrelate with a broad of domains.
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Figure 1. Interoperability and Standardization main objectives.
Towards the consecution of these objectives, the main activities performed by the I&S Action group has been twofold: (i) adoption of SAREF4WATR; and (ii) data harmonization and interoperability at cross-domains. In relation to the adoption of SAREF4WATR, the ICT4WATER cluster in cooperation with ETSI has released an ontology to drive the interpretation of water data. Indeed, this is an important step towards the further and safest use of smart technologies aiming at more efficient use of water resources.
Regarding the data harmonization and interoperability at cross-domain, the AG is also devoted to promoting common cross-domain models and open-APIs based on SAREF4WATR to ensure data exchange between water and their interrelated domains. Subsequently from this action, there has been established synergies with the energy sector in order to establish digital synergies between both domains to enable data sharing. This action has been materialised in form of a collaboration with the BRIDGE cluster. Under this collaboration, there has been working on the adoption of common reference architectures and also the harmonization of energy and water data models.
Despite these advancements, the work still continues. Within this coming year, we will elaborate a report on the analysis on the use of SAREF4WATR and the CIM-Context broker inside the H2020 projects. In this regards, the group will work on the harmonization between SAREF4WATR and CIM Context broker, both tools from ETSI in order to offer the projects and the water industry a standardised knowledge sharing tool.
As a conclusion of the year, making the information more interpretable and interoperable will enable the co-creation of different cross-domain synergies and decision-making procedures. This will benefit society and water organizations on a newer business paradigm aligned with the digital and data economy.
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Action Group Cybersecurity |
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The Cybersecurity Action Group in ICT4Water |
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The Cybersecurity action group aims at raising awareness and R&I on cybersecurity in the water sector and to strengthen the collaboration with the European Cybersecurity Network. The Action group is currently formed by four projects:
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STOP-IT
The STOP-IT project will end in 2021. The STOP-IT consortium has collaborated in different directions: raising awareness about cybersecurity in the water sector, by organizing dedicated thematic communities of practice; supporting water utilities to systematically protect their systems by addressing cyber-physical security as an integrated approach and by developing technological solutions; and improving the ability to cope with new risks, by building competence through training activities.
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Aqua3S
The aqua3S project aims to combine novel technologies in water safety & security, with the goal of standardising existing sensor technologies while enabling water facilities to easily integrate such solutions in order to detect and tackle water-related crises in a timely manner. Currently in its second year, aqua3S is scheduled to end in 2022.
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NAIADES
The NAIADES project aims to address the increased need for sustainable and eco-friendly water methodologies by defining a new ICT framework, with a wider scope than a sole technical proposition. Driven by the need to yield an end-to-end, uniform approach, NAIADES takes into account issues pertaining to cost, safety, complexity, vulnerability, societal acceptance, user behaviour & ethics.
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Digital-water.city
Digital-water.city integrates the development of digital solutions in a dedicated guiding protocol to cover existing gaps in governance, interoperability and cybersecurity.
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Action Group Cybersecurity |
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Whitepaper: Cybersecurity in the water sector |
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The action group is currently working on a White Paper on Cybersecurity in the water sector that will be published in order to raise awareness on the emerging aspect of security in the water field. The paper focuses on relevant challenges and gaps related to the Cybersecurity in the Water Sector and provides best practices and recommendations accordingly. Additionally, the paper also covers the coming policies on Cybersecurity (such as the Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems - NIS2 Directive) and Critical infrastructure protection by discussing how stakeholders in the water sector can address its implementation.
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As a preliminary step, a survey among the cluster projects has been launched in order to map the cybersecurity priority risks potentially created by the introduction of innovative digital solutions in the water sector. Aggregated and anonymized outcomes from the survey will be used and presented in the coming whitepaper, followed by a discussion on how to prevent and / or mitigate them.
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Action Group Cybersecurity
Shaping policies: the Action group contributes to the public consultation on the NIS2 Directive
The Action Group has provided its feedback through the public consultation on the revised Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems - NIS Directive (NIS2) by highlighting a list of recommendations under the prism of the water sector. Those recommendations cover potential issues raised by heterogeneity on the definition of Operators of Essential Services (OES) by EU Member States (MS), the needs of the private sector during the implementation and operation phase of this Directive, the need to widen the scope of information sharing to further embrace private entities, as well as the suggestion to utilise already developed solutions by recent EC funded research projects in order to overcome potential implementation challenges.
Further information on the NIS2 directive can be found at https://ec.europa.eu/digital-s...
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Action Group Cybersecurity |
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Connecting the dots. Cross fertilization actions with relevant European entities in Cybersecurity |
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The Action Group has established contacts with the most relevant stakeholders in the European cybersecurity ecosystem to discuss and reinforce the role of the water sector in the coming cross-industry policies on the topic:
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ENISA
The Action Group is in the process of establishing a collaboration with the capacity building unit of ENISA to facilitate the challenging process of implementing the revised NIS and Critical Entities Resilience Directives.
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ECSO
The Action Group has also initiated discussions with the European Cyber Security Organisation (ECSO) in order to explore potential synergies between the two initiatives towards strengthening the cybersecurity and water nexus.
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BRIDGE
The Action Group is involved in the current conversations between the BRIDGE Energy cluster and the ICT4Water around the topic of the formulation of a reference architecture for data sharing from a multi-industry perspective including the Water-Energy nexus.
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DW2020
Webinar DW2020 Data Models
DW2020 (Digital Water 2020) is a synergy group within the ICT4WATER cluster, initiated by aqua3S, Digital-water.city, FIWARE4Water, NAIADES and SCOREwater to encourage further information sharing and discuss how the outcomes collected/worked on by each project can effectively address the many challenges currently faced by the water sector. The five projects work together in challenges related to the digitalisation of the water sector.
On March 3, 2021, DW2020 organised a webinar on “Data models with the FIWARE platform for the water sector”. The webinar includes a general presentation about DW2020, an introduction to the Data Models for the FIWARE platform, the context broker and a number of data models developed within DW2020 for water distribution networks (pressurised flow), raw water supply (open channel flow), Waste Water Treatment, social media crawling and digital imagery data.
The webinar was recorded here and all the presentations are available here.
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EASME
Joint forces to develop digital solutions for the water sector
On 20 January 2021, EASME organised the online workshop “Synergies of H2020 Digital water projects”. The event brought together five projects working for the digital transformation of the water sector, EU policy and project officers.
- DWC - DIGITAL-WATER.city - Leading urban water management to its digital future
- Fiware4Water - FIWARE for the Next Generation Internet Services for the WATER sector
- NAIADES - A holistic water ecosystem for digitisation of urban water sector
- SCOREWater - Smart City Observatories implement REsilient Water Management
- AQUA3S - Enhancing Standardisation strategies to integrate innovative technologies for Safety and Security in existing water networks.
All five projects are active members of the ICT4Water cluster. In addition, the five projects created, by their own initiative, the synergy group “Digital Water 2020” to align their efforts in strengthening digitalisation of the EU water sector providing smart solutions.
The three objectives of the workshop were: 1) Present the projects with a focus on their key results so far; 2) Outline the key synergies brought forward by the five projects through tangible examples; 3) Stir the policy dialogue, with feedback provided to policy makers by projects and vice-versa to projects by policy makers.
Discover all presentations, the workshop’s report, and a project showcase on the event page.
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iBathwater
Application of a context broker in the waste-water networks
Due to the importance of integrating and exposing information using standards and interoperable schemes, the iBathwater project has pursued the objective of elaborating a semantic interoperability strategy to offer the water domain reliable information about the operations of the waste-water and the corresponding bathing areas.
On the one hand, the project has promoted a semantic model (ontology) that has been an extension of SAREF4WATR. This ontology has served to make the different measurements and contextual information understandable for a variety of systems. This model has been specified (instantiated) with operational information from our demo-cases in the coastal Mediterranean region (Barcelona) and inland continental region (Berlin).
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On the other hand, the project also created a semantic sensor hub (context-broker) for the integration and homogenization of such information using JSON-LD serializations. The constructed context-broker follows the Web of Thing (WoT) architecture as an open standard offered by the W3C to expose the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor measurements. Hence, the elaborated context-broker corresponds to an event-model driven architecture to ingest and expose information in real-time and expose it using the expressivity offered by JSON-LD.
In conclusion, the adoption of open standards and APIs has permitted the project to elaborate a data-sharing ecosystem to build on top of that newer water digital services based on artificial intelligence.
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NAIADES
The water standardization importance for enabling Big Data Innovations
The water domain has been immersed in a proliferation of standards and directives to ensure the future availability of this precious resource. In terms of standards, there has been elaborated a huge amount of standards for the communication of sensor devices, measurement of contaminants, promotion of ICT architectures, etc. In the framework of the directives, there has been published and updated the Water Framework Directive, Bathing Water Directive, Flood directive and much more.
To facilitate the monitoring of such standards and directives elaborated for the water domain, NAIADES has launched a "Water Standardization Landscape" tool. As defined in the tool, it is a data observatory of current initiatives related to the current interoperability & standardization framework. The Water Standardization Landscape stores information about water directives and ICT standards, data exchange formats and semantic models. The tools permit to explore of this information and access to the source of such standards and directives, offering key metrics about their usage and application inside the Nexus. This tool has served the NAIADES project to select suitable standards for the ICT and Big Data ecosystem.
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Complementary to this aspect, NAIADES also has been highly involved in the publication and elaboration of ITU-T standard entitled "Y.Sup63 : Unlocking Internet of things with artificial intelligence". Specifically, NAIADES big data and semantic interoperability experts contributed to the roadmap of big data innovations of the water sector towards the construction of cognitive water architectures.
In conclusion, the importance of promoting tools to explore and also open-standards related to digital water services will permit the water industry to move faster towards digitalising their processes and build an economy based on the water data.
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“The PrimeWater survey ‘User preferences for Earth Observation services’ is now available online!
The survey is targeted at anyone interested in water monitoring and forecasting services and it will help us study the attitudes of users and stakeholders towards Earth Observation services. The survey is part of our co-creation approach, integrating the users’ preferences and associating user characteristics and needs with specific aspects of available products and services.
Take the survey here and share it within your network!
Note: The resulting dataset will be processed and stored anonymously. All information and results will always be presented in an aggregate form and will be used for the purpose of this research only.”
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ULTIMATE
ULTIMATE, towards achieving water smart industrial symbiosis
ULTIMATE is a 4-year Horizon 2020 project (2019-2023) under the EU Water in the Context of the Circular Economy programme (CE-SC5-04-2019 call). ULTIMATE aims to create economic value and increase sustainability by valorising waste water as a resource within the water cycle and demonstrate smart water symbiosis between industry and water utilities in nine high-profile cases in Europe and Israel. ULTIMATE is one of five sister projects that collaborate on building a water-smart economy and society.
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Figures - Case studies in Glenmorangie Distillery, Scotland and Alberta Fruit Processing Industry Nafplio, Greece.
Tools developed in ULTIMATE will be powered by FIWARE (www.fiware.org) and will be interoperable with any FIWARE compatible enabled information and/or data collection system operating at different locations – making this compatible to Smart Industry and Digital Twin technologies. ULTIMATE develops and applies smart tools to improve connections and data exchange between and across sectors, specifically hybrid computer modelling and simulation and discrete event simulation for the design of systems across industries, capturing water and energy resources reuse cycles and their subsequent valorisation. ULTIMATE actively involves and engages stakeholders from the start of the project, by introducing novel approaches in the water sector, so as to achieve successful uptake of reuse technologies and water smart solutions,. Specific attention is given to immersive experiences in multi-use play spaces, building on eXtended Reality (XR) solutions implementing data driven stories produced with visual scenarios. A digital market place for water, energy and materials (in a circular economy context) in water smart industrial symbiosis will be developed to stimulate matchmaking, making use of new industrial based ontologies developed, the technology evidence base, and the (Key Performance Indicator) KPI tool developed in ULTIMATE.
Gerard van den Berg (KWR Water Research Institute, Coordinator)
E Gerard.van.den.berg@kwrwater.nl
Links to full articles:
https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/kwr/accelerating-water-circular-economy-across-europe
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-wastewater-resource.html
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intelWATT
Preserving fresh water in industry: intelWATT project
intelWATT, “intelligent Water Treatment Technologies for water preservation combined with simultaneous energy production and material recovery in energy intensive industries” is a European project aiming to develop innovative, cost efficient and smart separation technologies for water preservation along with energy production and materials recovery. The concept of circular economy will be demonstrated in three case studies combining advanced membrane processes with smart sensor technology. In addition, intelligent control software modules incorporating real time process adaptation and deep learning capabilities will also be embedded. These novel solutions will be evaluated in three different water and energy intensive industrial sectors: thermoelectric power generation, mining, and electroplating.
Read the full article here >>
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ZERO BRINE
Opportunities for industrial brine management
ZERO BRINE is demonstrating the technical feasibility and economic and environmental benefits of recovering minerals and water from industrial brines for reuse in other industrial applications.
From now through November, the project will be releasing a series of policy briefs to exhibit the ZERO BRINE technology’s compatibility with the principles of Circular Economy, the Green Deal, the Industrial Emissions Directive and Zero Pollution Ambition.
The Zero Pollution Ambition for a toxic-free environment is a new European initiative aiming to prevent and reduce pollution in water, air and soil and also facilitate remediation. However, the current industrial emissions directive and the scope of the Zero Pollution initiative do not fully consider the impact of brine releases and opportunities for brine management. ZERO BRINE offers solutions to reduce pollution risks, while recovering valuable resources to strengthen European competitiveness and industrial circular processes. ZERO BRINE project’s outcomes can be considered as a contribution to the Zero Pollution initiative.
For the key recommendations, please see the ZERO BRINE Zero Pollution Policy Brief.
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Figure - Recovery of magnesium hydroxide at ZERO BRINE Demi water pilot.
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The projects in the ICT4Water cluster received funding from the European Union’s LIFE or Horizon2020 research and innovation programme.
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