Kick-off S3 platform Water Smart Territories

Submitted by Stefan Bergsma on 03 October 2019

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). 

Since 2016, the European commission created three S3 specific platforms including “Industrial Modernisation”. These platforms are meant to foster interregional 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. The Water Alliance, as the water cluster for the Dutch water technology sector, will look for cooperation opportunities for their network. 

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: Catalonia and Basque Country (Spain); Nord-Est (Romania); South Moravia (Czech Republic); Lombardy (Italy); Oulu and South Savo Mikkeli (Finland); Norte (Portugal); LatviaMaltaScotland.

The partnership in key figures:

  • 20 European regions
  • 4 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 new collaborative projects in water sector and related topics!

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

Contact: s.bergsma [at] wateralliance.nl

Cluster organisation
Share this Article