Water Wise: Decision-support system for safe water-use and water-reuse cycles

The Water Wise tool evaluates the microbial and chemical quality of water, compares this quality against relevant national and international guidelines, and offers users a basic risk assessment process. The goal of Water Wise is to accompany users in making safer and smarter decisions concerning their water cycles, in order to identify solutions for optimal water use and water reuse.

Guidelines

The tool’s users select their source water, treatment processes and end-use. The tool disposes of a database on the microbial and chemical water quality of these sources. The tool then evaluates the removal efficiency for the microbial and chemical parameters for the selected treatment processes, and presents the estimated water quality following the treatment. This water quality is compared against the relevant national and international guidelines, to determine whether the water is likely to meet the standards for its intended use. The users are then accompanied in making a basic risk assessment of the specific water system, as a means of introducing them to the concepts of Water Safety. Lastly, the users can export the assessment results, return and modify the choice of system, or compare different systems to see how different sources, treatment processes and end-uses contribute to the safety of the water loop.

New water cycles

This research represents a first step toward a tool to quantitatively evaluate the risks inherent to new water cycles, and to better understand how end-users can limit these risks in advance. More research and expert advice about new water-cycle risks are needed in order to complete the tool.

KWR developed the tool as part of the WiCE (Water in the Circular Economy) research programme, New Water Cycles.