The KIOS Center of Excellence is among the winners of the 2024 Water Europe Innovation Awards, receiving the “Digital Water Award” 2024 (https://watereurope.eu/) for the research, development, and demonstration in field exercises of an innovative software tool for investigating pathogen contamination events in water systems, “PathoINVEST”.
The PathoINVEST tool was developed by KIOS CoE in collaboration with KWR Water Research Institute and PHOEBE Innovations Ltd within the framework of the EU H2020 research project “Pathogen Contamination Emergency Response Technologies” (www.pathocert.eu). It is designed to enhance the response capabilities of water utilities during pathogen contamination events in drinking water networks. Also, it offers real-time pathogen contamination modeling, using Digital Twin technologies, which is crucial for effective emergency response and decision-making during contamination crises. The tool’s ability to provide rapid, actionable insights allows water utilities to manage contamination incidents proactively, support coordination with First Responders, enhancing public trust in water safety.
Since their launch in 2015, the Water Europe Innovation Awards have been raising the visibility of new innovative water-related approaches, solutions, and technologies with high market or high-value application potential with the aim to pave the way towards the implementation of the Water Europe Vision 2030 “The value of water: Towards a Water-Smart Society”.
Water contamination events, which can occur due to emergencies such as earthquakes, floods, cyber-attacks, accidents, or malicious attacks, can affect the health of first responders, water professionals, volunteers, and citizens. For this reason, stakeholders need to have tools for coordinating their efforts within the limited time, and answer question such as: how will a contamination event escalate in 2, 4 or 8 hours, which areas will be affected most severely, how many people will be affected and how?
The Award Ceremony took place on the 17th of June 2024, in Brussels, in the presence of more than 260 water professionals and EU officials. On behalf of the KIOS CoE, Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Demetris Eliades, received the award, saying that “in PathoINVEST, we demonstrated for the first time at a European scale, how our scientific research on security in smart water systems, can be used in real-life during emergency situations, effectively reducing the response time and supporting first responders in protecting as many lives as possible”.
