The sustainability of natural resources, such groundwater resources, is one of the greatest dares of the European Union and it constitutes a social, economic and technological challenge in urban areas. Climate change models have predicted increasing droughts in the Mediterranean region and potential water shortage is encouraging research into alternative water resources such as urban groundwater.
This valuable water resource is often pumped to cover various aspects of the growing urban water demand and/or at specific times (i.e., drought periods). These considerations lead one to wonder whether urban groundwater can be safely used, including its potential use as drinking water, because urban aquifers usually contain a wide range of pollutants (e.g., heavy metals, nutrients, pathogens, organic contaminants, etc.). To answer this question, it is necessary to identify the contaminants present in urban aquifers and the sources of contamination, to quantify the groundwater recharge, to assess the evolution of groundwater quality over time in order to assess its potential uses and to the development of new tools for innovative urban roundwater management strategies. Indeed, this research project (INTEGRATE) aims to develop a tool to the integrated management of urban groundwater, paying special attention to emerging contaminants (e.g., contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and virus) and the processes that contributes to their natural attenuation (e.g., redox processes, adsorption, etc.) in urban aquifers. Thus, the main outcome of INTEGRATE will be an integrated method for urban groundwater management using monitoring, measuring and modelling approaches that will support improved decision-making to ensure the long-term availability of water resources to the water authorities. The innovative aspect of this tool is to integrate the hydrogeochemical processes that affect urban groundwater contaminants at field scale in the numerical modelling because, so far, most research on these processes have been done at laboratory scale.
Funding: Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI)
