Scientists
Focus area

Innovation and Leadership of Circular Systems

The ability to introduce new innovative methods and processes must be strengthened within the water industry. Globally, there are now many initiatives that fundamentally strengthen the water industry’s ability to become innovative and receptive to the importance of water for the climate.

Water Wise Cities and Regions has been launched in recent years as a concept to improve water management and water supply. It is emphasized here that the view of water and the current division of water management into different legal areas of responsibility need to be coordinated. Developing water management towards an intelligent learning system will make the water system more efficient, improve economy and environmental performance.

Smart water services and Living Labs

The vision of smart water services also includes a strategic innovation and research agenda. The vision leads to a shift towards a circular economy, where we can avoid water shortages, ground and surface water pollution, as water, energy and resource loops are largely closed.

Living Labs

The circular economy is stimulated by using local resources to solve local issues, which increases the social awareness of local perspectives. In this context, Living Labs are central and act as user-centered ecosystems, based on open innovation where research and innovation processes build partnerships between the public, the private and people.

The establishment of Living Labs in the water area has the potential to strengthen a systematic sharing, learning and replication and that best practices are identified and accelerated in a chain of fast followers leading to increased resilience and a more efficient water system

New business models and alternative financing mechanisms are needed in this new landscape and with the help of networks of Living Labs the existing market dynamics can be developed and changed. Here are i.a. expansion and enabling of digital solutions for sharing data, monitoring, control and of processes and improved decision-making about new situations at different levels in society centrally. Regulatory and institutional barriers also need to be addressed to raise awareness of the benefits of better adapting water services for different societal structures and needs, with particular focus on social impact, gender dimension, human behavior and acceptance of the demonstrated solutions.

The Öresund region – one of the world’s leading regions in water management

The Öresund region is one of the world’s leading regions in water management issues. We have a large number of Living Labs in the area as well as high competence in the R&D sector in combination with many innovative companies that work with problems in these areas. We want to expand the use of the existing infrastructure that the region possesses and develop new cross-sectoral and cross-regional arenas where public actors, business and R&D can collaborate in technical and applied research and pilot activities to increase the region’s innovation capacity in our selected technical areas.

Scale up and down

We also want to take advantage of the scalable effects that our work will lead to. Smart water management services are not only in demand at our owning companies. There is great potential for leverage and diffusion activities to pave the way for further external implementation of services and products.

Cooperation models

In parallel with this need, we must develop cooperation models and enable further cross-sector cooperation between the R&D sector and business, where we take into account regulatory conditions and include public decision-makers in the processes.

Examples of how we has worked practically with these activities are through participation in the ICLEI World Congress hosted by the City of Malmö and the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition which was held in Copenhagen in 2022. In addition to these international events, we has also participated in H22, Helsingborg’s major innovation investment.

Objectives of the focus area

By 2025, we will have:

  • Created a model for how different Living Labs in the region can be used in collaboration to increase the rate of development and innovation in the water technology area.
  • Contributed to having established external knowledge regionally, nationally and internationally about the region’s innovative capacity in the field of water technology.​

Therese Jephson

Focus area leader
Therese Jephson
therese.jephson@swrab.se
+46 730 499 912