Nireas-IWRC at a Glance
In today’ s environment, society, individuals and organizations are confronted with ever increasing demands for water quantity and quality, with the demands raising profound questions regarding the society’s ability to synthesize efficient solutions to these rapidly proliferating problems. Nireas-IWRC helps counter this trend through the creation of a “home” for water-related research, and through the hosting of an internationally-recognized research institute for the advancement of water-related research. Consequently, Nireas-IWRC ultimately offers a platform not just for more effective technologies, but also for an entirely new generation of functionality for sustainable management of water resources, harnessing the synergies of integrated interdisciplinary research on water quality, quantity, and management and economics through a single knowledge repository. Nireas-IWRC generates a responsive environment for technology-enhanced research to motivate, engage and inspire citizens, and one that is embedded directly in the social web.
The activities of the Center aim at dependable, flexible and user-centric shared solutions for sustainable use of water resources and for better management of ecosystems including the mitigation of environmental degradation and associated threats. Nireas-IWRC’s research delivers visionary concepts and techniques, and strategic integrated approaches addressing water-related applications that are cost-effective, easy to set up and to operate.
The aforementioned activities include interdisciplinary research aiming at the solution of complex scientific and engineering problems under the unifying theme of water management. The goal is to develop further expertise that will enable an integrated approach to this important issue, coupling chemistry, biology, hydrology, geohydrology, hydraulics, advanced modeling capabilities and experimental/analytical work, computational mechanics, risk assessment, environmental science and education, economics and of course various specialties of engineering in order to face various emerging problems in this field. The implementation of the various projects that are stem from the Center are spearhead research at a pioneering level internationally. The projects of Nireas-IWRC are true inter-sectorial, effectively linked and integrated since the working schedule is structured so that various members are involved in several inter-related projects and activities. Each of the research pillars and tasks described below promotes competence and practical skills in various disciplines within the thematic area of water management. The overarching aim of Nireas-IWRC is to integrate and leverage this interdisciplinary research for the solution of complex scientific and engineering problems. Although distinct, the pillars have commonalities both in the scientific content and the industrial and real-life scale applications.
Nireas-IWRC focuses on 7 research pillars:
- Water/Wastewater quality, monitoring and treatment
- Drinking water supply, distribution and management
- Environmental Biotechnology
- Subsurface processes and engineering
- Hydrologic, hydro-geomorphic and hydro-climatic processes
- Geophysical hydrodynamics
- Socioeconomic analysis of water-related issues
Nireas-IWRC’s major research areas are:
- Advanced chemical water treatment
- Advanced wastewater treatment through hybrid processes
- Development of wastewater biotreatment technologies
- Data-driven kinetic modelling in aquatic environments
- Development and use of porous materials in water treatment applications
- Characterization of properties of particles in waters and identification of organics adsorbed on solid surfaces
- Environmental chemical analysis for water quality
- Water pollutants impact assessment
- Water resource evaluation
- Groundwater resources
- Protection of groundwater resources
- Groundwater recharge
- Development of mitigation techniques for evaporative loss from freshwater reservoirs
- Reservoir sedimentation monitoring and management
- Surface reservoir integrity
- Water supply and urban water management
- Automatic meter reading and ad-hoc wireless sensor networks for leak detection
- Numerical modeling of sediment transport in coastal regions
- Numerical modeling, prediction and monitoring of salt-water intrusion on coastal aquifers
- Numerical modeling of oscillating water columns
- Wave energy conversion and converters
- Characterization of effects of different natural and anthropogenic perturbations in hydrologic systems
- High-resolution coupled models of hydrologic and hydro-geomorphic processes
- Stochastic modeling of hydrologic and hydro-climatic processes
- Socioeconomic analysis for water-related issues