Sustainable Water Management inside around large urban areas Report

Dear members of the WssTP, Dear readers, We are very proud to present our first scientific publication based on the work of our pilot programme Urban areas. Since its creation, the WssTP is devoted in providing strategic answers to global challenges for the future of the water sector. We published several key documents delivering vision to contribute to the creation of a competitive European Research Area in the sector of water. We released the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) in 2006, the Vision document in 2007 and the Implementation plan in 2008. Our expertise is based on the contribution of all the water stakeholders including more than 400 individuals and 120 organisations from Europe. Since the publication of this unique work, the challenges and research projects keep evolving through the implementation phase and the work of our 6 pilot programmes. The work of the pilot on "Urban areas" is one example of the contribution of the WssTP to the water sector. From 2007 to 2009, the different experts of this pilot gathered in several workshops on key topics related to the challenges of urban areas. The result was the publication of five documents including state of the arts, research proposals and recommendations, implementations cases in specific topics such as "managing rain events and flooding" or "asset management". These documents were released to the European Commission; they contributed to the definition of the content of 7th Framework Programme (FP7). The work of experts also resulted in the creation of consortia, PREPARED awarded by the European Commission. Since that success, our mission was to publish this document giving the main inputs for research in "urban areas". We would highly appreciate your comments on this publication and you contribution to our work in the future. We wish that you will enjoy reading this publication, Yours sincerely, Diane d'Arras Chair of WssTP Director of Research and Innovation, SUEZ Environnement