Achieving wider uptake of water-smart solutions

WIDER - UPTAKE 

International Conference on Wider-Uptake of Water Resource Recovery from Wastewater Treatment – ICWRR2024

&

7th IWA – Regional Membrane Technology Conference – IWA-RMTC 2024

The International Conference on Wider-Uptake of Water Resource Recovery from Wastewater Treatment – ICWRR2024 & 7th IWA – Regional Membrane Technology Conference – IWA-RMTC 2024 were hosted by University of Palermo from 18-21 June 2024 – Palermo, Italy. 

The International Conference on Wider-Uptake of Water Resource Recovery from Wastewater Treatment – ICWRR2024 was the final conference of the Project “Achieving Wider uptake of watersmart solutions”.

The event was organized by Palermo University and was supported by the International Water Association (IWA) 

Local and national water sector decision makers provided their auspicious (Italian Ministry on Research, Italian Ministry of Environment and Energy Security, Regional Agency for the Environmental Protection, Sicilian Region, Assembly of Sicilian Region, Municipalities of Palermo, Corleone and Marineo). 


The core idea behind the organization of the conference was also to provide a networking among Palermo (with its history, monument, culture…), participants with their 42 countries and local decision makers. 

The event embraced nine topics for ICWRR2024 and eleven for 7th IWA-RMTC 2024 all related to water and wastewater treatment and resource recovery. Ten keynotes were held by the following professors, whose contributions are highly inspiring: Volcke Eveline (Ghent University), Morgenroth Eberhard (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), Zhiguo Yuan (City University of Hong Kong), Ana Soares (Cranfield University), Ng How Yong (NUS Environmental Research Institute), Yongmei Li (Tongji University), Menachem Elimelech (Yale University), Damià Barceló (IDAEA-CSIC), Xia Huang (School of Environment, Tsinghua University, China), Zhiwei Wang (Tongji University, China)

During the event the Special Session of the IWA Task Group on Membrane Bioreactor Modelling and Control was organized


Dissemination 

Two books of conference proceedings were published edited by Springer indexed in Scopus. The Springer books titled “Resource Recovery from Wastewater Treatment” and “Frontiers in Membrane Technology” indexed in Scopus and available on line, representing a timeless heritage for the scientific community. 

The book addresses the latest research advances, innovations, and applications in the field water, wastewater treatment and resource recovery presented during the ICWRR2024 & 7th IWA-RMTC 2024.

The selected papers from the conference will be published in one of the four special issue linked to the ICWRR2024 & 7th IWA-RMTC 2024. In particular, there are existing publication efforts under way to publish papers in special issues of Elsevier Journal: 


The conference in numbers

Over 300 extended abstracts have been submitted. Each of them was assessed by at least three members of the scientific committee. Overall, 250 extended abstracts have been selected for presentation at the conference, with over 210 oral presentations (extended and flash) and around 40 posters. Two scientific committees with over than 100 members were involved.

The conference hosted more than 300 participants coming from over 42 Countries. The core idea of the organizers was to create the right platform for promoting the discussion amongst scientists, professionals and academia on membrane technology and resource recovery 


This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 869283