British Water Members' Handbook 2017 2017 Edition | Page 38

T WENT Y65
“TWENTY65 is paving the way for a future
that delivers sustainable tailored solutions
that positively impact on public health, the
environment, the economy and society”.
The current approach of centralised treatment
and distribution of drinking water has made
significant advances in protecting public health
and fundamentally changing the way people live.
However, the delivery of high quality drinking water to
every home and building has come at a cost in terms
of energy, capital, and impact on the environment.
Moving into the future, population increase, aging
infrastructure, and the need to better protect the
natural environment all in the context of uncertain
climate change will drive our current systems beyond
breaking point.
Given this situation, a grand challenge emerges: how
can we tailor water systems to deliver positive impact
on health, the environment, the economy, and society
over the next 50 years? The TWENTY65 consortium,
which includes the Universities of Sheffield, Exeter,
Imperial College, Manchester, Newcastle, and Reading
is tackling this grand challenge through research and
collaboration across the water sector.
Combinations of disruptive innovations are needed
to change the current water paradigm to create more
flexible and adaptive systems. The application of
traditional technology-based solutions alone is not the
way forward; there is no universal single innovation
that, on its own, can address the interconnected and
interacting pressures. Thus a suite of solutions will be
required for each individual location, catchment, city,
or neighbourhood.
Our research will identify and develop disruptive
innovations that can impact across the water cycle
as well as to understand how to integrate these and
other innovations, in a future context, to evaluate and
optimise the performance of each suite of solutions
and how these can best work synergistically with
existing infrastructure systems.
TWENTY65 comprises a variety of research themes
linked and supported by a central water innovation
hub. Fundamental science and engineering research
is core to each theme, with significant impact and
benefit resulting from deep and disruptive questioning
around the current water management paradigm.
Our research asks:
• Can game changing treatments provide more
sustainable alternatives to the current centralised
treatment and distribution systems?
• Can we align and exploit synergies between
distributed water and energy systems to help meet
the challenges of energy storage and renewable
generation
• Can we develop autonomous robots to replace
human intervention in the monitoring and
restoration of buried infrastructure?
• Can we integrate storm water management with
water supply to develop sustainable solutions?
• How will future changes in catchments impact our
water supply systems?
• Can we define best practice for engagement to
better support water stakeholders in changing their
actions and behaviours?
• Can we identify the key factors that influence multi-
stakeholder collaboration to overcome barriers and
accelerate innovation?
• Can we develop future water scenarios to assess
social and technical solutions to address the
challenges faced?
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