D7.6: Report on synergetic activities inside the portfolio of SC05-11-2018 projects

The EU H2020 call SC5-11-2018 was entitled: « Digital solutions for water: linking the physical and digital world for water solutions ». Four projects were funded out of this: digital-water.city, ScoreWater, Fiware4Water and Naiades. Given the theme of the call, it was expected that the four projects had a lot in common in their scope, goals and innovation content. All the above four projects started at the same time, in June 2019. During the preparation of the Grant Agreement (GA), EASME suggested that these four projects should team up and develop synergies and common activities, so as to facilitate cooperation and enhance the impact of each project. This suggestion was included as contractual obligation for the four projects, i.e. that there would be two common deliverables, describing the synergies and cooperation of this group. At the same time, another EU call, namely H2020-SU-SEC-2018-DRS-03 “Pre-normative research and demonstration for disaster-resilient societies” supported the funding of the project aqua3S. Given the thematic proximity between the two calls, it was suggested to “adopt” aqua3S as standalone project into the group of the four sister projects. Thus the group increased in size, comprising now five projects (4+1), with interests and activities in common around “digital water” themes and organized itself as the DigitalWater2020 (DW2020) group. DW2020 is organized along five thematic areas / Task Forces (TF): Ontologies, Sensors demonstration, Business models, Communication and Policy, each with its own Task Force leader. Additionally a sixth task force (Task Force 0: Management) has been created, to coordinate the efforts and activities overall. Participation in the task forces is voluntary for the partners and researchers involved in the five projects, based on their interests and the specific tasks they are involved in their respective projects. The goal of the task forces is to do “real” work, with several regular teleconferences, investigating common problems and approaches, helping each other, exchanging knowledge to avoid “re-inventing the wheel” for specific challenges. Consequently several early career researchers are actively involved, together with more experienced older researchers, benefiting all from the knowledge exchange that takes place on a regular basis. A first deliverable submitted in May 2020 (Synergies inside the portfolio of SC05-11-2018 projects) presented the scope and ambition of the group. The report 1) identified potential synergies between the above mentioned projects, 2) highlighted common scope of work and complementarities and 3) presented the structure of the Synergy group DW2020. Building on the previous deliverable, this second report aims at presenting the concrete activities of the task forces as well as summarizing the main outcomes obtained in the frame of the collaboration. Finally, it outlines the next steps for each task force and how the synergetic activities might be continued at the end of the projects.