The Mediterranean library of knowledge
Explore the ENI CBC Med Programme's library of deliverables: a comprehensive digital repository of diverse resources tailored for the Mediterranean region. Discover in-depth studies, innovative strategies, and practical tools spanning tools addressing key environmental, economic, and social issues. The library is your go-to source to find valuable knowledge to inspire new collaborative projects driving fair, sustainable and inclusive development across the Mediterranean.
Identification and collection of SMEs’ offers and Needs
Collection of at least 80 Open Innovation opportunities (solutions and offers) in the platform to promote partnerships, open innovation, and faster uptake of research results. The activity will identify solutions and needs from SMEs and start-ups that have interest to set up collaborations at cross border level with emphasis to key sustainability areas. To achieve a balanced geographical spread, the programme will design a model that will allow to categorize different needs and solutions.
Euro-Mediterranean Open Innovation Network Handbook development
The experience and the feedback gained from these workshops will be integrated into a “EuroMED Open Innovation Network Handbook” which will be offered to policy makers, intermediaries, and agencies in EU & MPC countries. Correction measures and actions will be integrated for fine-tuning, guiding, or even shifting (if necessary) the delivery mechanism or the nature of services offered addressed. Feasibility and financial sustainability planning including roadmap for post project activities.
Roadmap for Operational uptake of EMPHASIS
A roadmap consolidating recommendations and methodologies for Open Innovation in a modular toolbox for the Euromed area. This task will support the uptake of the EMPHASIS approach, services and operational environment through a hands-on EUROMED wide Deployment plan. Based on the OI Network Handbook, the consortium will propose different business scenarios, strategic alliance building with similar and/or complementary initiatives and will deliver a set of proposals for capitalization from operators.
Roadmap for mainstreaming EMPHASIS approach/ policy adoption
Policy recommendations in a form of a roadmap will be consolidating key findings taking into consideration the EUROMED region’s Research to Innovation System and identifying commonalities and challenges among participating countries. Areas for cooperation, promotion of cross-border innovation partnerships and innovation support measures will be presented in different aspects of Innovation Policy.
EMPHASIS Open call document
Design and launch of an open call where lean templates for submitting needs and offers will be developed and integrated in the online platform. The call will set several evaluation criteria (including TRL and MRL) and will secure a transparent, open and fair procedure for all beneficiaries. Incorporation of necessary legal and GDPR policy procedures will be considered. We anticipate reaching at least 80 SMEs' offers and needs from targets interested in engaging with EMPHASIS OI Network.
Country Reports: Sustainability Challenges & Priorities
Compilation of regional and national data, reports, studies and technology foresights, so as to extract the needs, challenges, opportunities, threats & obstacles existing for SMEs innovation in the in the EUROMED region with emphasis in the sustainability field. Analysis of roles that have been or need to be played by Research & Technology Organisations (RTOs), Intermediaries, clusters, Public Sector, etc. to facilitate SMEs accessing external knowledge and uptake of research findings.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 2 Exceeding on expectations
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing and how junior high school students amaze their teachers with their intimate knowledge also of EU regulations concerning treated wastewater reuse and more.
This second tome, published in October 2023 brings the sequel to My Autobiography: Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance, published in February 2022. The latter collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
In this sequel, the reader is informed how the project reached all of its originally foreseen objectives ... and much more ! ... hence the title ‘Exceeding on expectations’.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 1 Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing.
This first tome, published in February 2022 collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan
The AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan takes stock of the ENI CBC Med funded project’s achievements from two complementary perspectives.
The first chapter collects the Project Legacies – which have been aggregated under no less than 10 different headers – together with the targeted recipients and informs on how public access to these legacies will be ensured beyond the project lifetime. Consequently, further details are presented on each of these respective project legacies.
The second chapter informs about the project’s Capacity Building Achievements, the recipients and the quantified targets reached in terms of the number of Certified APOC users, i.e. the number of persons who received training of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, abbreviated to APOC system; the number of tertiary degree awards to women in Tunisia for their research related to the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, and a multitude of women researchers who have been highly instrumental in the successful outcomes of the project’s research activities and for making the outcomes accessible to a wider public, including society at large.
The final, third chapter reiterates on the Project Key Performance Indicators, which sustains the subtitle of the second volume of AQUACYCLE My Autobiography: Exceeding on Expectations.
AQUACYCLE In-depth analysis of local water and sanitation governance framework
The present document brings the analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of the local Governance Framework in the three countries where pilot demonstration units of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system have been constructed, i.e. Lebanon, Spain and Tunisia.
The first chapter places the scope of the present SWOT analysis in the context of the overall aim and the specific objectives of ‘Preparing for participatory decision-making’.
Chapter 2 elaborates briefly on the rationale for the SWOT analysis to be based on a desk review of available reports and assessment studies and interviews with representatives of the public authorities involved at the national, regional and local level. This is followed by a detailed description of the roles and involvement of the main stakeholders’ groups in Chapter 3, while Chapter 4 brings an overview of the regulatory framework for sanitation, wastewater treatment and reuse in agriculture in the respective countries. Chapter 5 informs on the semi-structured questionnaire that was elaborated for the purpose of interviewing the main stakeholders in each country and reports on the outcomes of the 15 stakeholder interviews that were conducted.
Chapter 6 presents the outcomes of the SWOT analysis of the eco-innovative wastewater treatment technology brought by AQUACYCLE, (for technical details on the technology see Output APOC technical guide). In turn, these outcomes provided a solid basis for the elaboration in Chapter 7 of forward looking strategies for the Mediterranean Region as a whole and for the targeted case study countries in particular. Finally, overall conclusions and recommendations are provided in Chapter 8.
AQUACYCLE Technical guide on project's eco-innovative wastewater treatment system
This technical guide has been designed to provide guidance to staff of public and private entities needing info on the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system (abbreviated to APOC system) design, operation and maintenance.
The acronym APOC stands for “Anaerobic digestion”, “Photocatalytic Oxidation” and “Constructed wetland”, the three components of the eco-innovative wastewater treatment system promoted by the AQUACYCLE project. Anaerobic treatment and constructed wetlands are two mature and commercialized technologies with wide applications in the wastewater treatment market, that are combined with a novel solar disinfection/photocatalytic oxidation process towards the treatment of municipal wastewater at a level that satisfies the most stringent standards for reuse. The distinctive features of APOC technology make it eco-friendly, efficient and cost-effective as it is based on natural systems, it uses less chemicals, runs on renewable energy (solar irradiation), produces biogas, fertiliser and a clean water for reuse in agriculture, in domestic, industrial or other applications, and the constructed wetland thrives as a habitant, an ecological tourist attraction aside from being a climate change mitigation measure.
This guide has been prepared by a cross-border multidisciplinary scientific interaction. Specifically, AQUACYCLE partners which hold expertise in the three different components of the APOC system have provided the necessary technical information and data sheets for the scope of this manual.
AQUACYCLE Pilot Demonstration Units of an Eco-Innovative Wastewater Treatment System
Three pilot demonstration units of AQUACYCLE’s low-cost, eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, abbreviated to APOC system, have been constructed at the following locations: 1) a site owned by the real estate company SANABEL in Deddeh, south of Tripoli in North Lebanon; (2) at the existing anaerobic wastewater treatment facility of Blanca in the Murcia Region of Spain; and (3) at the existing wastewater treatment facility of Bent Saidane in the Zaghouan Governorate of Tunisia. The three sites have in common that they represent small to medium sized communities whose livelihoods depend primarily on agriculture.
The present Output explains the entire construction process from contract award to commissioning, including plant performance. The details of the construction are presented to provide the next developers of other APOC facilities with a visual guide to help them replicate the APOC eco-innovative system for municipal wastewater treatment and reuse in small to medium-size communities.
This activity has been split into three parts, one for each demo site, as there are differences between the designs. It will enrich knowledge even more as it can help to compare the different variants of APOC systems.