The revised EU Drinking Water Directive promotes a risk assessment and risk management approach for securing drinking water supply in the context of climate change and increased pollution. However, this approach is challenged by insufficient information that is available to operators, especially in real time, on compounds and organisms of emerging concern, such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, disinfection by-products, heavy metals and pathogenic micro-organisms. We argue that if drinking water treatment could leverage novel technologies and design philosophies, and more agile operational actions could be supported, drinking water supply systems could become more adaptable and robust without expensive infrastructural investments. In this context, ToDrinQ develops and tests a compendium of modular, complementary, innovative solutions (the ‘ToDrinQ Toolkit’) that provide new information and better support tools to operators and designers to adapt to (short- and long-term) changes in water quality, while obtaining high drinking water quality at the tap. ToDrinQ develops novel real time sensing and water quality monitoring technologies, innovative treatment systems (especially suitable for small-scale/modular, adaptable treatment plants) and interoperable decision tools that support resilient, evidence-based treatment plant design and improved overall water system operational awareness and response. The consortium is perfectly placed to achieve significant progress beyond the state of art, based on a research-technology alliance of leading universities and research institutes and innovative technology developers including deep tech SMEs. It is also ideally placed to maximise relevance and impact by grounding its innovations on diverse real-world cases through co-creation with five pro-active water companies (in the Netherlands, Greece, France, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic), and maximise outreach through the influential multi-stakeholder, network Water Europe.

The NextGen initiative will evaluate and champion innovative and transformational circular economy solutions and systems that challenge embedded thinking and practices around resource use in the water sector. We will produce new understandings to underpin the exploitation of techniques and technologies that enhance our ability to recover, refine, reuse, repurpose, capture value from, and extend the use-life of, an ever-increasing range of resources and products, thereby projecting the European water and allied sectors as global circular economy pioneers. NextGen will demonstrate innovative technological, business and governance solutions for water in the circular economy in ten high-profile, large-scale, demonstration cases across Europe, and we will develop the necessary approaches, tools and partnerships, to transfer and upscale. The circular economy transition to be driven by NextGen encompasses a wide range of water-embedded resources: water itself (reuse at multiple scales supported by nature-based storage, optimal management strategies, advanced treatment technologies, engineered ecosystems and compact/mobile/scalable systems); energy (combined water-energy management, treatment plants as energy factories, water-enabled heat transfer, storage and recovery for allied industries and commercial sectors) and materials (nutrient mining and reuse, manufacturing new products from waste streams, regenerating and repurposing membranes to reduce water reuse costs, and producing activated carbon from sludge to minimise costs of micro-pollutant removal). The project mobilises a strong partnership of water companies, industry, specialised SMEs, applied research institutes, technology platforms, city and regional authorities and builds on an impressive portfolio of past research and innovation projects, leveraging multiple European and global networks guaranteeing real impact.