About Our Organisation - AQUATEC, Agbar Group
AQUATEC (Agbar group) is a water and environmental technology company providing services including consulting, design services, integral project management, installation and implementation of advanced solutions for optimization of integral water cycle processes and conservation of the environment. Within Aquatec, the Climate Change and Resilience Direction, participating in the KNOWING project is focused on the transformation of the traditional management of cities into a smart and resilient one on the basis of knowledge and applied R+D+i.
Main research areas of our department include: smart and efficient management of urban drainage systems; water, climate change and resilience in urban context; reduction of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) impacts in receiving waters; sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) as nature-based solutions or rainwater harvesting for urban uses.
Aquatec has a vast experience on assessing the impact of extreme weather (mainly flooding) events on water quantity and the subsequent effects on urban drainage management (development of advanced modeling tools, hazard and risk maps, analysis of cascade effects between urban services, etc.) and to provide innovative adaptation measures, technologies and solutions to mitigate climate impacts on the water cycle, including structural measures such as nature-based solutions and non-structural measures such as early warning systems.
Our Role in KNOWING
AQUATEC participates in KNOWING project due to its expertise in risk assessment, climate change adaptation and urban resilience related to flooding events. Accordingly, we are the technical coordinators of the Granollers case study focused on flooding and infrastructure and will support the replicability of its results in the city of Vienna. Technically, AQUATEC will contribute to all of the project work packages with main focus on: the identification of climate influences and interrelations related to flooding, the development of a modeling framework for quantifying causal interactions between flooding events and urban infrastructures/services (including cascading effects), the proposal of adaptation measures to reduce/mitigate impacts derived from flooding events and the modeling and quantification of its contribution to reduce local risk and improve urban resilience.
Why KNOWING Matters to Us
AQUATEC has a vast experience in coordinating and participating in research projects leading to direct and applicable methodologies and tools to support urban areas to increase its resilience to climate change. We are convinced that KNOWING project can contribute a lot in this field, because its research is not only limited to climate change adaptation, but it will furthermore find synergies with mitigation pathways and optimal interrelations (and collaborations) between public and private sectors, which is also a leitmotiv of our research.
