Pre-Christmas meeting to look back at 2020

Just before Christmas, on 17 December 2020 the BSR WATER platform consortium met to update each other on the project progress achieved throughout the year. A set of cheerfully decorated Zoom windows looked into the homes and offices of the ten platform partners actively working for developing the smart water sector.

While faced with the inevitability of the pandemic limitations, in 2020 the platform held multiple meetings both offline (until mid-March) and online (the rest of the time), enabling discussions and learning. The same limitations in fact highlighted an important advantage of one of the platform's key outputs: Baltic Smart Water Hub created for the open online exchange of expertise.

Throughout 2020, more than 30 practices, solutions and tools from all around the Baltic Sea Region had been collected in the Water Hub, from single-household wastewater treatment solutions to drinking water production in bigger cities of the region. Examples of attractive urban development to ensure sustainable stormwater management, treatment of wastewater from meat and dairy indistries, risk maps on exposure to water-related climate hazards, and on top of that – a newly-launched innovation section for highlighting cutting-edge technologies tested on the pilot- and laboratory-scale! A lot to read, learn and get inspired, which is what we warmly invite you to do.

Looking back at the year further, significant work was done on preparing regional recommendations for nutrient recycling, handling of hazardous substances and sustainable stormwater management. After the extensive research done by University of Tartu together with HELCOM on the nutrient recycling topic, the autumn discussion at the EUSBSR Annual Forum allowed collecting valuable points and formulating the direction for preparing regional recommendations on this subject. In turn, stormwater management recommendations have also been developed by Riga City Council during the year, with the conducted and processed in-depth survey and interviews to combine the legal basis for stormwater handling on local, regional and national level, as well as to establish what practices are applied in BSR cities. Publications of all the recommendations planned in BSR WATER will be out in 2021, stay tuned!

We are looking forward to the next year of cooperation, and here are some wishes for 2021 that we'd agreed on among our partnership:

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