Water is too precious to waste — yet pollution, overuse, and poor management are making it dangerously scarce, posing serious risks to both human populations and natural ecosystems. Traditional water infrastructure often struggles to keep up with these evolving challenges, failing to manage water in a sustainable way. To secure our future, we must rethink the way our water systems operate, and adopt a circular approach, where every drop is reused, restored, and regenerated, at a domestic, and city-wide level.

The WaterWise Hub is strategically focused on Europe’s Widening countries —Greece, Romania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine—regions that face unique challenges and opportunities in water management. These countries are some of the most water-stressed areas in Europe, experiencing significant environmental pressures, infrastructural constraints, and limited resources. For example, in Greece, only a small percentage of treated wastewater is reused for agricultural irrigation, and the reuse of wastewater sludge remains minimal, while almost all Widening Countries still face barriers to the adoption of water solutions, including regulatory hurdles, funding limitations, and technical gaps.

WaterWise Hub emphasizes closed-loop systems, optimal resource use, and reduced waste, aligning with EU policies and RIS3 strategies. Built on a quadruple helix model of innovation, it works at the nexus of technology acceleration, entrepreneurial support, and R&I, boosting water innovation regionally and beyond.

Our partners co-create an R&I Strategy, Action and Investment Plan, FundFinder Portal, Strategic & Tactical Decisions Toolbox, Operational Decisions Toolbox, and more. Together, we develop Water Tech Challenges, launch an Innovation Accelerator, produce LLL Training Courses, share a Knowledge Hub, and deploy a Mentoring Scheme. This bottom-up approach involves collaboration with key actors and stakeholders across the region.

The project is empowered by a strong partnership that brings together actors from government, R&I-driven universities and research centres,funding bodies, business, water utilities, SME associations and civil society to create services tailored for post-project sustainability and real-world impact.