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From Space to Tap — Satellite Technology for Improved Water Management

A briefing note from the SPACE-O project explores how advanced technology can be used by the water sector to optimize performance (in the case of water utilities) and improve management.

The brief takes the learnings from within the SPACE-O

project, including feedback received on developed approaches for use by water utilities to provide an overarching view of how advanced technology can be integrated effectively into water management.

 

Key messages include:

  • Technological innovation is instrumental in addressing our increasingly complex and multidisciplinary water challenges.
  • Integrating advanced technologies such as satellite data has the potential to expand monitoring capabilities across sectors and provide more dynamic disaggregated information across scales to make better decisions, and plans.
  • Earth observation and geospatial information can significantly reduce the costs of monitoring, as well as fill the gaps where information is not available, as well as providing consistent information over time.
  • Technologies like SPACE-O close the knowledge gap for informed and sustainable water resources governance and optimized water services provision. But they also need to be built to change and adapt to evolving technologies.
  • Innovation should be streamlined into policy instruments, and can be used to bridge silos between Earth Observation technologies and policy implementation requirements.
  • In order to be effectively used in decision and policy making, the function of digital technologies and the information they provide needs to be communicated and interpreted to all stakeholders involved.

Learn more on SPACE-O website
 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 689239