Urban water communities
VITO-Vlakwa and DuCoop are pleased to invite you to join a Community of Practice (COP) with the resounding title 'Urban water communities'. This interactive and learning network offers a valuable opportunity to actively exchange knowledge and practical experience on residential areas of the future in Flanders.
Take part in the first CoP Urban water communities: Collective rainwater systems The first CoP on Thursday 13 June in Herentals will focus on the innovative rainwater project 'Smart street'. B-rain Connect and Pidpa will immerse us in collective rainwater collection, reuse and infiltration in a new residential area in Heist-op-den-Berg. As the upper deck slabs are not yet in place, participants will now have the special opportunity to see the integrated system in practice.
Why be part of the CoP 'Urban Water Communities'?
- Actively contribute to solutions to shared challenges in developing urban water communities
- Learn from innovative case studies both within the ANCHOR project and beyond
- Network with other experts and stakeholders of residential areas of the future
- Get concrete tools to organise, finance and implement urban water projects
What is the ANCHOR project about?
The CoP 'Urban water communities' is within the Interreg North Sea Region project 'ANCHOR'. Through a European demonstration network, ANCHOR explores how to roll out residential communities of the future. The Belgian demo is De Nieuwe Dokken site in Ghent.
The same challenges often crop up in such innovation projects; stumbling blocks that often greatly delay project realisations or even eventually cause them to plummet. Those issues can be divided into 4 groups:
- ORGANISATION - How do you organise the project? Who takes what responsibility? How do you involve stakeholders in the right way?
- FINANCING - How do you finance the project? When is a business case feasible?
- TECHNOLOGY - What technological barriers or uncertainties do we encounter?
- LEGISLATION - How do you reconcile innovative projects with current legislation?
The purpose of the CoP
The CoP network aims to address these recurring challenges by actively reflecting and sharing knowledge from practical cases. In this way, we can take steps forward to make it easier to roll out similar water projects. The ANCHOR project mainly takes a closer look at decentralised treatment in an urban context and recovery and reuse of valuable raw materials from domestic wastewater.
In the CoP network, we want to broaden that view further and also highlight projects around collective rainwater use or ASR, as on 13 June.