Water Europe and the Water Oriented Living Labs
Living labs are defined as “user-centred, open innovation ecosystems based on a systematic user co-creation approach in public-private-people partnerships, integrating research and innovation processes in real-life communities and settings”.
Vertical Visionary Leadership Teams of Water Europe (WE), steering the three WE market and living labs-oriented clusters, namely Water Smart Industry, Water Smart City and Water Smart Rural, support the implementation of the WE Water Vision The Value of Water and the achievement of the Water-Smart Society, through the development and collaboration with the European Water Oriented Living Labs (WOLLs).
WOLL’s are real-life, water oriented and demo-type and platform-type environments with a cross-sector nexus approach, which have the involvement and commitment of multi-stakeholders and provide a real life “field lab” to develop, test, and validate a combination of solutions as defined in the WE SIRA.This which include technologies, their integration in combination with new business and governance models, and innovative policies based on the true Value of Water.
105 EU WOLLs have been identified and categorised across the mapping exercise, of which;
WOLLS geographical scale
Water Europe published in 2019 the first edition of the “Atlas of the European Water-Oriented Living Labs” which contains a first-ever mapping and classification of European Water-oriented Living Labs.
Living lab research platforms.
EU network platforms
Living lab project-platforms
The Atlas also shows that the WOLLs organizational form action lab, association, cluster, experimental catchment, urban lab, water treatment plant, research platform, and network platform, while the geographical scale of the majority of WOLLs is sub-regional.