WaterInnEU’s primary vision is to create a marketplace to enhance the exploitation of EU funded ICT models, tools, protocols and policy briefs related to water and to establish suitable conditions for new market opportunities based on these offerings. WaterInnEU will build upon existing knowledge bases and platforms developed in previous projects but will provide new concepts, connections, and components that are essential for a marketplace to work. The primary goals can be detailed in five major objectives: a) Gather the outcomes of previous European funded projects, and contribute to their dissemination and exploitation to be used as an instrument for supporting the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). b) Assess the level of standardization and interoperability of these outcomes as a mechanism to integrate ICT-based tools, and incorporate open data platforms and generate a palette of interchangeable components that are able to use the water data emerging from the data sharing processes and data models stimulated by initiatives such as the INSPIRE directive. c) Create the marketplace as a service: a forum formed by water research projects representatives, stakeholders in the water domain, and companies (in particular SMEs), who are capable of moving current products into the market and offer them to, for example, river basin managers, at different levels. The user segment will mainly benefit from the capability of the water partnerships (e.g. the Global Water Partnership), in bringing together a wide variety of water sector stakeholders and practitioners such as decision makers, public and private users, local, regional and international entities, multidisciplinary stakeholders. d) Build an open virtual marketplace that includes the Water Knowledge Portal of projects and research (WISE-RTD), a user feedback facility and a success stories portfolio, additionally to the current tools and policies lists.

Ponds and “pondscapes” (networks of ponds) are crucial for biodiversity conservation and their multiple societally beneficial ecosystem services (ES) provide the means to play a crucial role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. However, ponds are largely neglected in water- and nature-related policies and there is insufficient knowledge on how to manage and restore ponds to maximize their role as nature-based solutions (NBS) to increase resilience of ecosystems and society to climate change (CC). The overarching aim of PONDERFUL is to facilitate improved implementation of ponds NBS for CC mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity conservation and delivery of ES through generating and integrating biodiversity, ecosystems, social, economic and policy knowledge and providing evidence-based guidance and tools for pond NBS implementation. To achieve this, PONDERFUL will: 1) evaluate the interactions and feedbacks between biodiversity, ES and climate in pondscapes at multiple spatial scales; 2) together with stakeholders, develop future scenarios for pondscapes in EU and CELAC in the context of CC, land use change, and changed policies; 3) develop and test the implementation of effective multifunctional NBS in close collaboration with the stakeholders using DEMOnstration sites in EU and CELAC countries; 4) develop a sustainable finance and investment guide for NBS, in collaboration with local stakeholders; 5) assess the potential for large-scale implementation of the proposed NBS in relation to existing barriers, enabling factors, financing and as economic viability, as well as social perceptions of benefits from pond NBS. Ultimately, the stakeholder-oriented approach adopted by PONDERFUL will ensure that the scientific knowledge produced on the benefits of using pondscapes as ecosystems delivering multiple ES is explicitly considered in decision making from local management to EU policies.