Research partners (description)

Institute for Water Provision, Water Ecology and Waste Management

Expertise and experience of the partner:

The Institute for Water Provision, Water Ecology and Waste Management with its department for Sanitary Engineering and Water Pollution Control (IWGA-SIG) is one of the major Austrian research and educational organisations in the this field.

IWGA is active in education, applied science and research for water quality management. Emphasising an integrated approach, the topics include a wide range of disciplines (e.g. measurement and control, aquatic chemistry/microbiology, modelling, strategic planning methods..); therefore experienced in contributing to interdisciplinary and international projects, in close contact with other research institutions, administrative bodies, professional associations and industry. Besides the lectures, the field of education is covered by various activities, reaching from international conferences to training courses for administrative and private organisations (e.g. operators of sewer-networks, on monitoring and sampling).

The departments permanent staff consists of 25 people, half of them scientists. The further infrastructure consists of chemical / microbiological laboratories and an engineering school for pilot plants in almost all usual scales. The annual turnover in the private sector is between 1 and 1,5 M Euro.

Due to changes in legislation and because of needs for own projects the department has continuously intensified its activities in monitoring / assessment and measurement and control during the last years. The developments are mainly measurement methods, sensor / softsensor applications and real time methods to transform data into information. Currently the department is involved in two European projects concerning water quality monitoring. The first is a LIFE99 project called "Management of sensible water uses with the help of innovative sensors" together with Vienna water works and deals with the demonstration of an alarm system entirely based on sensor measurements directly in the medium of concern. The second with the acronym IMSIS deals with polymer enhanced mid infrared fibre sensors for the monitoring of trace pollutants in groundwater near contaminated sites.

Hence the department has out-sourced some of its previous activities to private spin off companies in order to strengthen the contacts to SME´s and industry. The department is defining new key research areas and monitoring and control is one of them.