ABOUT
What is AMIIGA
AMIIGA is a project pulling together 12 partners from 6 countries of central Europe, all sharing the objective of developing an integrated approach to the management of groundwater quality in functional urban areas.
AMIIGA project tackles the problem of groundwater contamination originating from sources located in brownfield sites, which is common in Central Europe.
Why AMIIGA
Much progress has been made in urban environment management in Europe, but little progress in tackling groundwater pollution - common problem to most central Europe urban areas - in the wider territorial dimension of FUAs.
Groundwater knows no administrative borders; a groundwater body covers both “city cores” and “hinterlands”, which is the basic challenge for groundwater management.
Groundwater contamination is a key obstacle in brownfield regeneration. The EU Groundwater Directive regulates procedures at the scale of groundwater bodies and assigns responsibility for local contamination from point sources to national level. However, in FUAs a multitude of point sources and related plumes of contamination require effective intervention at a medium scale, which is neglected in existing legislation.
Why transnational co-operation
. Ambitious remediation targets cannot be achieved within reasonable costs and timeframes by an organization alone.
. Dealing with groundwater contamination at the FUA scale is in the loophole between EU-regulation (large scale contamination) and national legislation (local point sources). Transnational efforts in awareness rising will raise this issue to the regulatory level, and will support the definition of basic principles on mitigation strategies and measures.
. Academic partners will provide applied research (CSIA, BMTs and modeling), which will result in cooperation on local activities. Such cooperation will be further supported by study visits and job-shadowing
.Groundwater contamination is a problem that goes beyond administrative boundaries of a local public authority: there is little experience in Europe in the management of such challenges in FUAs. Partners will jointly elaborate groundwater management plans (contribution to local outputs via expert panel and workshops on local management plans). The formulation of a regional strategy will be carried out with involvement of relevant associated partners (targeting the policy level) to ensure its subsequent implementation.
How
AMIIGA focuses on multiple characterization, assessment and management strategies.
It builds and capitalizes on the results of the FOKS project (CE 2007-2013). AMIIGA further develops FOKS tools for characterization and prioritization of groundwater contamination sources. The innovative instrument “groundwater management plan” is a further development of the decision-support strategies of FOKS. Key elements of this integrated management instrument are characterization, remediation and monitoring plus the management strategy and plan. This involves both technical and process innovation and strengthens water management capacities. The FOKS tools will be further developed, amended by biological (BMTs) & isotopic (CSIA) tools and up-scaled in order to make them suitable for groundwater contamination sources at FUA scale. The integrated AMIIGA approach will include also innovative remediation technologies, economically sustainable and based on biological process: natural and enhanced attenuation.
Process innovation of AMIIGA consists of the involvement of cross-sectional and cross-hierarchical partnership for the development of the integrated groundwater management plans through regular meetings of Regional Implementation Groups. These Groups consist of partners and associated partners from different administrative levels involved in water management and environmental development representing each AMIIGA region. Such joint efforts at FUA scale go beyond current practice in each participating region.
When
This is a three-year project running between September 2016 – August 2019.
