Activity

NES research and innovation are mostly developed within European (e.g. FP7, H2020 and LIFE) and national projects, funded by the European Commission and the national Foundation for Science and Technology under competitive calls.

On top of that, NES activity is increasingly supported by National Initiatives (iEQTA, iAflui, GPI, iPerdas, PASt21), an in-house developed model of collaborative projects with researchers, IT providers and utilities – 10 to 20 in each initiative. This format ensures a strong engagement of all parties, an effective transfer of knowledge, methodologies and tools, a significant representativeness and a scale effect. It is fully supported by the water utilities and the R&D partners (LNEC and its promoting partners) allowing a cost-sharing between end-users, direct funding for research and innovation by industry without recourse to public funds. Further, these collaborative projects promote a problem-driven research, consumer-oriented, with clear advantages in terms of capacity building and impact of the project outcomes within the project consortium and broader.

Dissemination of best practices and technologies and capacity building actions are also key-elements of our activity, and include:

• post-graduate courses (master, PhD and Post-doc), in close collaboration with universities and polytechnics across the country, namely with the Universities of Lisbon, NOVA, Algarve, Coimbra, Évora, Porto and Católica;
  
• academic (e.g., ERASMUS program) and professional training (e.g., Chamber of Engineers; Engineering Laboratories of Portuguese speaking countries, funded by CPLP/Instituto Camões);
  
• technical courses for water professionals, many co-organized with key professional associations.
  
• (co)organization of national and international (periodic and non-periodic) technical-scientific events, with key R&D institutions and associations, especially with IWA – International Water Association (the biennials World Water Congress, LESAM, REUSE, EFFICIENT, etc.), APESB (the biennials ENaSB, SILUBESA) and APRH - Portuguese Association of Water Resources (the biennials Congresso da Água);
• intense standardization activity, chairing the National Technical Commission on Urban Water Systems and many of its sub-commissions, and integrating many CEN and ISO working groups.

For developing its activity, NES uses multidisciplinary competences and a wide range of leading-edge methodologies and equipment, such as:

• AWARE-P Infrastructure Asset Management Planning Methodology;
• methodologies and tools for assessing and improving the performance of the urban water services, the full cycle, abstraction - treatment - use - drainage – interception – treatment – discharge and/or reuse, with special focus on the water and energy efficiency;
• risk management and water cycle safety planning framework;
• methodologies and tools for risk management and planning of safety and resilience in the urban water cycle;
  
• statistical tools and mathematical models of water supply, wastewater and rainwater systems, and of conventional and advanced treatment (membranes, adsorption and biofiltration) for drinking water production, treated wastewater reuse and wastewater for disposal in receiving waters;
  
• equipment and methods for monitoring rainfall, hydraulic and energy variables and water quality parameters;
• equipment and methods for inspection of domestic and stormwater sewers;
• equipment and methods for the analysis of water;
• bench-scale (for lab screening trials) and pilot equipment (for field demonstration) and experimental procedures and methods for tailoring drinking water treatment and water reclamation processes (visit Operational Units);
• methodologies and tools for benchmarking water treatment processes.