The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) allows work to go beyond the traditional scope of urban nature-based solutions (NBS), in which ecosystem services are provided to citizens, to include environmental impacts generated over the entire life cycle of the NBS, i.e., from raw material extraction, through materials processing, production, distribution, and use stages, to end-of-life management. In this work, we explored how LCA has been applied in the context of NBS through a critical analysis of the literature. Systems under review were not restricted to one typology of NBS or another, but were meant to cover a broad range of NBS, from NBS on the ground, water-related NBS, building NBS, to NBS strategies. In total, 130 LCA studies of NBS were analysed according to several criteria derived from the LCA methodology or from specific challenges associated with NBS. Results show that studies were based on different scopes, resulting in the selection of different functional units and system boundaries. Accordingly, we propose an innovative approach based on the ecosystem services (ES) concept to classify and quantify these functional units. We also identify and discuss two recent and promising approaches to solve multifunctionality that could be adapted for LCA of NBS.

The need for an efficient Water Management System (WMS) is strongly felt by water utilities, municipalities and by medium to large scale corporates that have to face every day with problems dealing with water usage and supply Leveraging a sensor data network, an automated system to implement fault detection in a water network at an early stage can be a valuable tool that saves water, energy, time and money. This paper introduces a novel FDD (fault detection and diagnosis) approach for water networks developed within the FP7 Waternomics Project by modeling a water network in the simulation environment EPANET and applying an anomaly detection algorithm named ADWICE (Anomaly Detection With fast Incremental ClustEring) to real time data of water flow and pressure to infer performance and operational anomalies. The method is currently being implemented at the Linate Airport water network in Milan, and initial results are presented in this paper.

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

A lack of water information, management and decision support tools that present meaningful and personalized information about usage, price, and availability of water to end users, hinders the efforts to manage water as a resource. WATERNOMICS is an EU-funded research project that aims to address these issues using innovative information, communication and technology (ICT) tools. The project will develop and introduce ICT as an enabling technology to manage water as a resource, increase end-user conservation awareness and affect behavioral changes, and to avoid waste through leak detection and diagnosis. This paper describes the first version of a standards-based methodology for the development and implementation of ICT-enabled water management programs. This methodology will, given constraints, standards, corporate preferences, and KPIs, provide decision makers and designers with a systematic way to select technologies, measurement points, data collection methods, and data management techniques for ICT-based water management systems.

INNOQUA is a Horizon 2020 EU-funded project involving 20 partners that seeks to demonstrate in real conditions a modular system for water treatment based on the purifying capacity of biological microorganisms (earthworms, zooplankton and microalgae). The configuration of the system will be adjusted according to the targeted markets in order to answer the most possible market needs. The final objective of the project is to provide an ecological water sanitation system for rural areas and communities, for industries with specific characteristics (such as agriculture and aquaculture), for sustainable home-builders or collective housing owners and for developing countries worldwide.

INNOQUA, an EU-funded project through the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme launched in June 2016, aims to meet this challenge by promoting sustainable water sanitation technologies capable of performing a whole water treatment cycle.