Horizon Results Booster supports EU-India Water Management Task Force

Only 30% of India’s population has access to treated drinking water, and more than 37 million Indians per year suffer from water-borne diseases.

Five distinct projects co-funded by Horizon 2020 and by the Indian Government - LOTUS, PANI-WATER, India-H20, PAVITRA-GANGA and PAVITR – are tackling this issue in different ways, through various types of technological innovation. With the same overall objectives, the five projects decided to apply for Horizon Results Booster services, so that they could combine forces and meld their communication and dissemination activities, so as to maximise their impact.

“We needed a joint communication, because all of our projects had an individual visual identity,” says Caroline Guillet, Consultant for the G.A.C Group, who are leading the co-creation and impact maximisation activities in the LOTUS project.

The first step was to develop a joint identity for the five projects, and the Horizon Results Booster team got to work. After discussions with each of the projects and deepening the understanding of the goals that the five projects had in common, the EU-India Water Management Task Force was born.

The years 2020-2021 were especially difficult for all five projects. India suffered immensely because of the coronavirus, and the restrictions on global travel meant that the EU-India Water Management Task Force faced severe communications difficulties.

“India was hit really badly, all of our field use cases were put on hold. We did our best to interact but we were far away, vaccinated, and this was not the case for our Indian colleagues,” says Guillet. “We are planning to go back to India in 2022 and the project team is mitigating the best that we can. But the pandemic has made our project super difficult and I’m sure it’s the same for all projects.”

Since an in-person event was obviously impossible, the Horizon Results Booster team supported the EU-India Water Management Task Force in organising a joint webinar as part of EU Green Week.

This webinar presented the Task Force for the first time, and highlighted the work of each of the 5 projects. Reaching out to their target audience of Indian stakeholders, each of the projects discussed their results to date and what was planned for the future. By using the digital platform, they were able to reach out to an engaged and global audience, including key actors from India. Sixty people showed up, mostly researchers in India, and 300 registered.

A joint branding was developed for the Task Force, with new visuals common to all of the projects, and communications tools like a flyer and video were also created.

The work of the individual projects are as follows:

LOTUS is developing a multi-functional sensor device that can be applied to a range of different situations to tackle India’s water problem. The sensor and the related innovations would be tested in a wide range of scenarios: in one rural area, to help to monitor water purity levels, so that a new network of pipelines that is being rolled out will always have high-standard water. In another, the goal is to detect natural contamination from fluoride and arsenic in drinking water sources, like wells. One of the use cases is the sacred Ganga River.

PANI-WATER leverages three technologies – a multifunctional reactor capable of treating 50,000 litres of water per day; a solar-driven device capable of removing organic matter and microorganisms from the water that is capable of treating 100 litres per day, and a photocatalytic plant that uses sunlight to activate oxidants like oxygen and persulfate, which is capable of treating up to 1000 litres per day.

India-H20 are developing a low energy reverse osmosis technology, mimicking and reversing the way that plants draw up water through their roots, to purify water.

The PAVITR project utilises nature-based solutions to treat water, including electro-chlorination and the filtration of contaminants from groundwater.

The Pavitra-Ganga project focuses on the Ganga Riverand aims to support wastewater treatment there, using advanced technology to eliminate heavy metals and organic pollution in the river.

Watch the video