Digital Tools for Sustainable Water Resources Management: Integrating impact of change of climate, land use, and optimised solutions

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Extreme climatic events can bring considerable impacts on human societies and ecosystems. The occurrence of hydroclimate extremes, such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves, accompanied by increasing extreme magnitudes, has been rising worldwide. Global warming induced by human-caused climate change has changed the hydrological cycle and intensified water quality challenges. These challenges include polluted runoff from urbanised areas flowing into receiving water bodies such as rivers and lakes, causing eutrophication problems, increased harmful algal blooms and high pathogen loads. Consequently, our drinking water supply, ecosystem services and human health are threatened. How healthy is our water? Can we make our receiving water bodies, such as drinking water sources or recreational waters safe? Can we cope with future climatic events? Can we test and find optimised solutions which can be used in operation and planning by stakeholders in the water sector? Those are vital questions that our joint efforts from Poland, Sweden, and the UK, with advanced competence in water resources management, are trying to tackle.Water management in hydroclimatic extreme events requires systematic analysis, which includes both upstream and downstream perspectives, on a catchment scale. Water management has been advanced and facilitated by recent developments in digitalisation in the water industry, advanced sensors in water quality monitoring and risk warning, and advanced computation with AI and machine learning combined with process-based modelling. Therefore, joint efforts through our competent consortium in water management knowledge and cutting-edge development in our field will make our water management smarter and inspire many players in the water sector in and outside Europe. We aim to develop digital tools for sustainable water resources management by integrating the impact of change of climate, land use, and optimised solutions. The specific water problems we aim to contribute to are eutrophication, toxic algal blooms, and pathogenic contamination. The highlight of our competence varies from urban flood control to 3D technology application, sensor development to advanced process-based modelling, and AI for water quality prediction to science citizen engagement. The integration can later be expanded to other quantity and quality aspects of water management. Below are some details of our research advancement in the field.Flooding and drought risks in urban areas and their consequences: Sustainable and innovative water solutions are highly required for Smart Cities to be established, particularly the water challenges critical for liveability and adequate and safe water supply for societal needs. (UK)Advancement in hardware and software: Current development of data integration and 3D visualisation will be demonstrated (Poland)Climate chambers: We will employ the use of controlled climatic chambers for future scenario analysis and for verifying modelling results (Sweden)Aquatic ecology and diversity: We investigate and include the effect of extreme weather events in conceptual models for future algal blooms, thereby filling critical knowledge gaps.Advancement in water quality monitoring: The influence of sensors and Big Data analytics is very significant, we will employ the use of newly developed sensors to generate water quality data (bacterial and algal quality) and combine this with satellite data. (UK, Poland & Sweden)The digitalisation of water resources management: We will develop an integrated 3D hydrodynamic and water quality model and (incorporate real-time sensor data) in our new project (TWIN-Waters). We will apply this at catchment scale by testing and implementing new sensors, satellite open-source data and service, models (early warning or prediction) with AI and advanced data analysis, and interactive reporting with innovative ways for better communication in water resources management.