REV-EU

Conventional urban wastewater systems follow a linear management model, leading to inefficiencies in addressing societal, environmental, and economic challenges in urban areas. Issues such as water scarcity from droughts and environmental degradation (e.g. eutrophication) highlight the need for a transition to regenerative, resilient, circular urban water systems. Source-separating wastewater systems (SSWS) represent a disruptive innovation, enabling efficient water and nutrient recycling, while reducing eutrophication and CO₂ emissions. REV-EU’s overall project goal is to support the redesign of urban water supply chains, through source-separating wastewater systems (SSWS) for water and nutrient recovery, saving both freshwater and nutrients for more regenerative, robust, resilient and circular urban water cycles. REV-EU’s research questions focus on: 1. Redesigning urban water supply chains for improved circularity. 2. Developing economic measures for resilient and robust circular water services. 3. Innovating governance and organizational strategies for urban water management with SSWS. 4. Overcoming socio-technical lock-ins to enable the scaling and maintenance of SSWS. To address the research questions REV-EU has five objectives: WP1: Efficient project management WP2: Applied research and technical development of greywater (GW) and urine diverting (UD) systems for reuse in new urban supply chains WP3: Urban transition advancement on national/regional/city level, with close involvement of relevant stakeholders WP4: Accelerate national transition through transnational exchange WP5: Contribution to and interaction with the DUT knowledge hub REV-EU’s expected results include to deliver insights for addressing and reshaping urban water management for increased resilience and sustainability, focusing specifically on greywater treatment for water reuse and urine diversion for nutrient reuse. REV-EU will look at, among other things, governance/organizational innovation and socio-technical regime transition. Measurable improvements in urban water resilience and sustainability will be demonstrated by REV-EU. Other outcomes are to advance technology for GW reuse and UD systems to higher technology readiness levels (TRLs) and to provide policy recommendations and strategies for local authorities to implement SSWS effectively. REV-EU’s scientific and technological approaches include close stakeholder involvement in all countries throughout the project, cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary studies (including fertilizer field trials, sociological approaches, complex system modelization to visualize socio-technical lock-ins), laboratory and pilot scale trials for technical improvement, cross-sectoral cooperation and urban living labs, business model identification, organizational and institutional innovation. The international consortium includes expertise from Sweden, France, and Norway, leveraging diverse urban contexts and experiences within different systemic dimensions. Collaborative efforts focus on sharing technical, organizational, and institutional knowledge and developing knowledge, methodologies, and policies to facilitate the transition from linear to circular water systems. Stakeholders that will be impacted by REV-EU are the public sector, local authorities, private sector, civil society and research organizations, all gaining insights into regenerative circularity of greywater and urine diversion systems. Expected ultimate impacts of REV-EU on communities are improved water security, enhanced urban resilience, contributing to sustainable urban living, and to economic benefits. REV-EU addresses global challenges like water scarcity, climate change, and resource dependency. The long term vison of REV-EU is to drive a paradigm shift in urban water management, creating regenerative water cycles that integrate water reuse, nutrient recycling, and cross-sector collaboration by bridging research and real-world implementation.