B-WaterSmart - CoP's architecture and stakeholder mapping for each Living Lab

“Water is one of the world’s most pressing and multifaceted issues. Innovative solutions (e.g., use of alternative water resources, industrial and urban water reuse, improved balance of water-energy-nutrients and increased efficiency in the water sector, selection, co-development and application of interlinked cost-effective technologies, concepts, water-smart data solutions) will come about as a result of effective collaboration, communication and knowledge exchange. Alongside the need to find these innovative solutions, research has shown that bringing together people from different backgrounds and interests can increase the potential for relevant innovations that can be effectively applied at the local level, as well as scaled up and disseminated.
B-WaterSmart aims to develop sustainable and economically efficient solutions for optimised water use to enable water-smart economies and societies in six European coastal cities and regions acting as Living Labs (LL) – Alicante, Bodø, Flanders, Lisbon, East Frisia and Venice – and supported by Communities of Practise (CoP) and an Innovation Alliance (InAll). CoP will bring together relevant key actors/stakeholders to ensure co-development, acceptance, implementation and thus actual systemic innovation in an interdisciplinary approach. In a nutshell, CoP will promote mutual learning and incorporate stakeholder knowledge, recognise commonalities and gaps between LLs while ensuring solution transferability and replicability, and analyse barriers and drivers to innovation growth and market outreach. InAll will implement peer-to-peer capacity building by testing and refining the water smartness assessment framework and demonstrate its usability as key for strategic planning towards greater water smartness.”

(Citation: Rebelo, M., Cardoso, M.A., et.al. – B-WaterSmart – CoP’s architecture and stakeholder mapping for each Living Lab – D1.1 (2021))