Worldwide the water supply sector is facing tremendous challenges. Ever new emerging contaminants and pathogens and aging infrastructures being vulnerable for deliberate contamination, pose a threat to the quality of water supplies. Shortage of good quality and readily treatable resources is increasing due to global warming, urbanisation and pollution from agriculture and industry. Regulators and consumers are becoming more demanding.

TECHNEAU is addressing these challenges by developing adaptive supply system options and new and improved treatment and monitoring technologies. Future system options to be studies are flexible, small-scale and multi-source supplies, utilising non conventional resources like brackish groundwater, treated wastewater and urban groundwater. Treatment technologies include membrane and oxidation based multi-barrier schemes, providing safety against a broad sprectrum of chemical and microbiological contaminants. Monitoring technologies to be developed will provide on-line and at the site information on water quality including parameters that relate to malicious contamination. The project will integrate and further develop current work on modelling with the purpose of controlling and optimising systems. A framework for risk assessment/risk management will assist in integrating the project output into the practice of the water companies.

The project will enable endusers to make informed choices, appropriate to their own circumstances and constraints, for cost-effective and sustainable source-to-tapo solutions for the provision of safe high qualtiy drinking water that has the trust of the consumer. This step-change will be achieved by a critical mass of researchers, technology developers and users from across Europe and developing countries.