Co-UDlabs (Collaborative Urban Drainage Research Labs communities) is a project funded by the Horizon 2020 programme (2021-2025) under the Research Infrastructures programme. CO-UDlabs aimed at integrating research and innovation activities in the field of Urban Drainage Systems to address pressing public health, flood risks and environmental challenges. Coordinated by University of A Coruña (Spain), the project was implemented by 9 partners (including Euronovia) from 7 European countries. 

Urban Draining Systems are essential infrastructures providing safe sanitation and drainage and environmental protection by collecting and then returning water securely to the natural water bodies. However, many of them are ageing and deteriorating, causing important challenges such as pathogens and other emergent pollutants entering streets and properties via sewer flooding and natural surface waters being contaminated and their ecological status being degraded through sewer overflows.

Throughout its 4-year duration, Co-UDlabs developed three types of activities:

• Transnational Access: Co-UDlabs brought together 17 unique ‘field scale’ urban drainage experimental facilities designed for research across a range of disciplines and hosted by 7 research organisations in Europe: University of A Coruña (Spain), University of Sheffield (UK), INSA Lyon (France), Aalborg University (Denmark), Deltares (Netherlands), EAWAG (Switzerland) and IKT (Germany). Through three calls for proposal targeting scientific communities, water utility and supply chain innovators worldwide, diverse groups could come together, share ideas, co-produce project concepts and benefit from access to these top-class research infrastructures to develop, improve and demonstrate those concepts, thereby building a collaborative European Urban Drainage innovation community.

• Networking Activities planned to consolidate the European community of urban drainage researchers, innovators and utilities and to contribute to create a culture of cooperation with the main actors working in the urban drainage field.

• Joint Research Activities among the consortium research teams to facilitate progress in the urban drainage discipline by the transfer of new technologies, procedures and best practices.

Co-UDlabs’ legacy towards an international urban drainage community

• One of the major achievements of the project was the provision of free-of-charge Transnational Access to its network of 7 Research Infrastructures, involving 227 users from 122 institutions in 26 countries, including 11 non-EU.

• The Co-UDlabs legacy stands also in the number of innovative technologies and tools resulting from its research activities, free training and education activities (6 webinars and 11 physical and online training sessions for urban drainage students and industry professionals) and several publications and datasets available in open access.

• Emphasizing a stronger science-to-policy link, the project ensured that its four-year efforts translate into impactful results and benefits for urban communities worldwide. Co-UDlabs developed 3 policy briefs (one on Combined Sewer Overflow Spills, one on the role of Research Infrastructures and one on Permeable Pavements Clogging), to provide policy recommendations and guidelines on these topics to European, national, and local policy-makers and regulators.

• Co-UDlabs proactively worked and contributed to propose a new international Working Group on Large Research Infrastructures, that was established as a pioneering initiative under the IWA/IAHR Joint Committee on Urban Drainage (JCUD) – with the aim to build the first global network of large Research Infrastructures (RI) focused on urban drainage systems.

Euronovia’s involvement in the Co-UDlabs project

As Work Package leader, Euronovia was responsible for communicating and disseminating the project activities and results. Over the four-year period, the following actions were carried out in this Work Package:

• Development of several supports (brochures, press releases, media press kits).
• Organisation of 31 events, including several webinars, with 900 people reached.
• Participation in 53 external events, including 19 scientific conferences, 16 national technical events and 7 popularisation events.
• 3 participations in conferences with a Co-UDlabs exhibition booth: NOVATECH 2023, ICUD 2024 and redSUDS 2025.
• The publication of 11 scientific articles, 28 conference papers and 3 technical articles and 30 datasets (all available on Zenodo) – but this number is expected to increase in the coming months, as more journal articles have been submitted.
• A final event of the project organised on the premises of the Fundación Galicia-Europa in Brussels and  streamed online.

A few months after the end of the project, the European Commission reported a very effective promotion of the project and its achievements and highlighted the ‘exceptional results with significant immediate or potential impact, especially on the scientific community and infrastructure operators’.

The communication documents created by Euronovia are available here: Communication material – Co-UDlabs