Innovative solutions to deal water scarcity

Bioazul is currently working on the project “Finding innovative solutions for water scarcity in Southern Europe” since it joined to the EIT Food platform last year.

The project is coordinated by EIT Food, a pan-European consortium that focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation in the food sector. The members of the EIT Food community are world-class players in the international food domain: over 50 partners from leading businesses, research centres and universities across 13 countries. The EIT Food is in turn one of the communities that forms the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT), an independent body of the EU that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship across Europe to overcome some of its greatest challenges.

EIT Food and Bioazul has joined forces with EIT Climate, EIT Manufacturing and EIT Raw Materials to work together in this new project and face the real challenges around water scarcity. This collaboration is also an opportunity to create synergies and share knowledge and practices for the best development of the project.

The project, focused on finding innovative solutions for water scarcity in Southern Europe, aims to enhance knowledge and overcome current barriers to tackle water scarcity through innovation, entrepreneurship, education and communication.

The main efforts will be destined to carry out different activities from research to innovation across 3 countries: Italy, Greece and Spain with the aim finding innovative solutions to prevent and mitigate water scarcity and drought situation. The activities programmed will be:

Expert Body: a group of 16 experts from different backgrounds will work together to identify the 6 key challenges around water scarcity, exploit synergies amongs regions with modest to modate rates in innovation and create an active network of over 50 stakeholders to discuss about water challenges. 

Challenge Labs: three challenge lab will be held in Southern Europe -Italy, Greece and Spain-, gathering each at least ten entrepreneurs that will work together to propose solutions to one of the 6 key issues proposed by the experts.

The Water Academy: three capacity-building trainings will be organised in the south of Europe – Italy, Greece and Spain – with the aim of stimulating a learning enviroment based on the latest findings, solutions and alternatives related to water scarcity. This academy will build a strong network of experts and strengthen the innovation ecosystem. 

Water scarcity outreach: the project will engage with people so that they can become agents of change and walk toward a water-saving economy.

For the proper development of these activities there are open some calls to apply:

The partners search 30 startups to come up with innovative solutions for specific challenges on water scarcity. The 30 startups selected will present their solutions in competitive events (InnoWise Challenge Labs) held in Greece, Italy and Spain. 6 startups (2 per target country) will be awarded with a first economic prize of 10,000€ and a second prize of 5,000€ in each country. Call open until the 15^th June 2020.

 The consortium is looking for three organisations based in Greece, Italy and Spain to organise and conduct three startups events (Challenge Labs) in 2020 at regional level to find innovative solutions for water scarcity. Call open until the 20^th May 2020.