UK Water Industry Research's 2021 programme focuses on Big Questions

UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) has launched its research programme for 2021 with most of the 12 new projects going towards answering its Big Questions – the water industry’s strategic research programme. The rest focus on areas where the sector needs new evidence or expertise.

The projects cover:

• developing a new climate change adaptation framework to enable the water industry to plan for climate change in a consistent way;

• a project to identify how best to calculate the whole life carbon cost of an asset (operational and embodied carbon);

• four collaborative workshops focussed on the Zero Leakage and Zero Supply Interruptions Big Questions, including to progress effective early warning, event management and customer communication;

• water resource innovation workshops to understand and change customers’ water using behaviour, alternatives to freshwater abstraction; and big data to help reduce abstraction from the environment;

• Identifying and transferring minimal excavation methods for use in the water industry to help reduce leakage levels;

• the impact of dynamic system changes on customer acceptability of drinking water;

• two projects focused on wastewater microbiological standards and wastewater disinfection methods and costs; and

• delivery of UKWIR’s weekly Wastewater Briefings and Alerts with relevant sector intelligence and watching briefs on key issues.

UKWIR has invited interested parties to put forward ideas for project delivery by 22 January.