The official launch of “France Water Team”

Submitted by Alina Danieles… on 02 October 2019

The three French water clusters, AQUA-VALLEY, DREAM and HYDREOS gathered to create their federation France Water Team (FWT). FWT, based in Montpellier, represents a network of more than 500 active members among economic, research, academic, and public water-related actors. FWT also promotes the development of collaborative R&D projects allowing exceptional innovation for water and aquatic environment technologies. FWT aims then at developing solutions addressing the major challenges of water: metrology, resilience to climate change, fight against emerging pollution, resilient infrastructures, smart water management, digital transition, water reuse, and so on. The roadmap 2019-2022 of the national water competitiveness cluster (FWT) is defined in two main axes: supporting SME’s development and fostering innovation, through the launch of major structuring projects on water quality and resources management. To run this program, FWT focuses on the rise of water-related digital technologies such as: artificial intelligence, blockchain, connected objects, smart grids, and new network technologies.

Besides, the three water clusters keep their strong local commitments to carry on their actions with the actors of Occitanie/Pyrenees-Mediterranean, South Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur,  Centre- Val de Loire and Grand Est Regions.

In 2019, the European Commission approved the creation of a new European Smart Specialization Platform (S3)  “Water Smart Territories” (WST) focused on Industrial Modernisation. Three European Regions are leading this S3 “Water Smart Territories” Partnership: Aragón (Spain), Centre-Val de Loire (France) and Friesland (Netherlands). The three clusters and founding members of FWT joined this initiative alongside their respective Regions: Occitanie, Grand-Est and Centre-Val de Loire.

Since 2016, the European commission created three S3 specific platforms including “Industrial Modernisation”. These platforms are meant to foster inter-regional cooperation, along with the decision-makers, researchers and all regional actors such as clusters, and to meet the needs and challenges identified by the S3 Platform.

 The main goal of the S3 Partnership “Water Smart Territories” is to strengthen European Regions’ innovation capacity especially for water resource efficiency. It is also meant to promote new investments based on open innovation infrastructure and new technologies for sustainable water management by clusters and other actors in regional ecosystems.  

S3 WST Partnership will therefore pay special attention to the support of cross-sectoral collaboration between regional authorities, clusters, industries and research organisations in water and ICT sectors, and be able to highlight the most promising innovations. The exchange of experiences in interregional value chains, investment pipelines and investment platforms will enhance industrial dialogue and will allow the development of innovative technologies and services. Consequently, new projects and joint activities will drive regional cooperation through innovations.

As these objectives are shared by many European stakeholders, this specific topic WST was joined by 20 new Regions and Countries such as: Oulu and South Savo Mikkeli (Finland), Norte (Portugal), Nord-Est (Romania), Scotland, South Moravia (Czech Republic),  Latvia

© S3P WST

The partnership in key figures:

  • 20 European regions involved
  • 4 main topics: Boosting resilient infrastructure, Digitalization, Circular Economy, Enabling multistakeholder governance.
  • 1 kick-off meeting with representatives of the European commission on September 30 and  October 1 in Brussels
  • Plenty of upcoming collaborative projects in water sector and related topics!

More info about Water Smart Territories: https://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/water-smart-territories

Contact: contact [at] france-water-team.com

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