Deadline: 31-Mar-23

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and World Water Quality Alliance (WWQA), European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are soliciting proposals for challenges to accelerate innovation in water quality monitoring and assessment that will take place on 14 – 16 June 2023, in a hybrid format at JRC (Ispra, Italy).

Objectives and Focus Areas

• The Innovation Workshop on Water Quality Monitoring & Assessment aims at:
  • Understanding operational challenges and needs in water quality data collection, management and use;
  • Identifying and promoting innovative approaches and technologies for water quality data collection, management and use;
  • Supporting private sector (solution providers) to tailor their solutions to operational realities;
  • Helping academia to direct research towards the most pertinent topics where pragmatic solutions are concerned;
  • Identifying and promoting innovative approaches and tools that increase data uptake and use.
• The key focus areas of the workshop are:
  • Crowdsourcing for water quality monitoring and assessment (including associated uncertainties);
  • Acceptance and integration of water quality data from non-traditional data sources (e.g., citizen science, remote sensing, modelling);
  • Low-cost methodologies to monitor and assess water quality;
  • Integrated spatial, geophysical, and ground measurement to monitor and assess water quality;
  • Methods of data exploration and visualization.

Workshop Sessions and Expected Outcomes

• The workshop will include presentations, pitches and/or panel discussions on the operational challenges and needs as well as existing and potential innovative approaches and solutions. The workshop will also include collaborative working sessions aiming at:
  • Refining and narrowing down the challenges selected through this Call;
  • Exploring and defining innovative ideas and solutions to address these challenges;
  • Exploring and defining a way forward for the implementation of the identified innovative ideas and solutions.
• The expected outcomes of the workshop are:
  • Agreed post-workshop activities with committed partnerships;
  • Actionable case studies;
  • Publicly accessible report (mapping innovative ideas and solutions to the existing operational challenges and needs) with suggestions and recommendations.

Eligibility Criteria

The workshop participants will be targeted to be from:

• Public and private water quality monitoring agencies;
• National Hydrological Services (NHSs);
• Research & Academia;
• Private sector (solution providers);
• Public and private sectors reliant on water quality monitoring;
• Communities & local citizen science groups;
• International organizations & non-governmental organizations(NGOs);
• Foundations & developing agencies.

For more information, visit World Meteorological Organization (WMO).