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New project approved by NFB!

NÖ Forschungs- & Bildungsges.m.b.H. has approved our new project "FUTURE DANUBE - Prediction of future trends in health-related microbiological water quality of rivers in a rapidly changing world".


The duration is 3 years and is handled under the direction of Andreas Farnleitner and Alexander Kirschner through our department of water quality and health at the KL. Approval within the Life Science Call 2019.

 

River water resources essential for human health

 

Rivers provide drinking water or irrigation water, for example. They also provide natural environments for many leisure activities. Rivers are also important receiving waters for municipal wastewater disposal and can therefore be exposed to fecal microbiological contamination, which requires appropriate safety management to ensure adequate protection against infection when used appropriately. Contrary to their importance, little is known about the future challenges that rivers will face due to global change phenomena in terms of health-related aspects (climatic, demographic, economic and technological changes, new potential threats, such as growing shipping tourism).

Within this research project a new innovative combination of microbiological and molecular biological parameters for large rivers with dominant influence of municipal wastewater disposal will be established, which is able to robustly calibrate and verify mathematical simulation programs for estimating health-related water quality. For this purpose, genetic host-associated faecal markers for bacterial and viral inputs as well as standard indicators together with general water quality parameters are used for the investigations.

 

New developed simulation tool

 

The recently developed simulation tool QMRAcatch is used to model fecal pollution and health-related water quality. A multidisciplinary team of scientists, governmental water and health experts, and experienced practitioners from a leading water utility will formulate previously unsolved problems in the course of future global challenges ("Global Change") for densely populated catchment areas of large rivers. In a first step, these developed scenarios will be simulated for the Danube in the Lower Austrian section in order to be able to predict health-related challenges for future water quality management. In a second step, the detailed information obtained from the Danube will be used to extrapolate this information to other representative European locations of larger rivers.

 

Water quality for river water resources

 

The main objective of the project is to establish basic knowledge about health-related microbiological aspects of water quality for river water resources that are confronted with future global change phenomena. Furthermore, the research project will also provide optimal management strategies for (Lower) Austrian authorities and municipalities as well as for water utilities. The established methodology will also be of great interest for catchment areas outside Europe to enable health-related sustainable quality management of river water resources in a rapidly changing world.

Partner in this project: besides our ICC Water& Health partner Regina Sommer and Paul BlaschkeGruppe Wasser des Amts der NÖ Landesregierung (Leiter: Dipl-Ing. Martin Angelmaier). Further: EVN Wasser GmbH, Abteilung Umwelthygiene, Land NÖ and Schifffahrtsaufsicht vom Bundesministerium für Klimaschutz, Umwelt, Energie, Mobilität, Innovation und Technologie (BMVIT).

 



The ICC Water & Health
is a Cooporation of:

Technische Universität Wien
Medizinische Universität Wien
Karl Landsteiner Privatuniversität für Gesundheitswissenschaften