The WATERVERSE mission is to develop a Water Data Management Ecosystem (WDME) for making data management practices and resources in the water sector accessible, affordable, secure, fair, and easy to use, improving usability of data and the interoperability of data-intensive processes, thus lowering the entry barrier to data spaces, enhancing the resilience of water utilities and boosting the perceived value of data and therefore the market opportunities behind it. WATERVERSE takes a holistic, interdisciplinary approach in the water domain, blending together complementary competencies of 17 partners located in 10 EU countries, representing the water domain with Research organizations (including social sciences experts), water utilities, water domain technology providers and innovation companies, as well as the technical community that is driving the development of data spaces, thus increasing the resilience of the water sector and water utilities, as a whole. The project will:

(a) Actively engage end-users and stakeholders to assess the main gaps and challenges the water sector must overcome to effectively be part of and contribute to quality European data spaces,

(b) Identify, extend, and integrate a wide set of data management tools to implement the WDME, based on FIWARE (www.fiware.org) Building Blocks and comprising tools and methods to ensure security and energy efficiency of the whole WDME,

(c) Setup and demonstrate the WATERVERSE WDME in real environment with relevant and diverse case studies involving water sector stakeholders from 6 countries (Cyprus, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, United Kingdom),

(d) Set clear and measurable indicators for assessing FAIRness of data in water-related data spaces,

(e) Ensure the viability and sustainability of the WATERVERSE WDME, as well as its replicability, scalability and business applicability.

MKLab, the participating team from CERTH is responsible for the coordination of the project activities in order to assure the excellence of the project outcome by managing the project to time and budget, coordinating the activities, monitoring and adjusting the implementation plan if needed, and by monitoring the data management and the ethics. Moreover, the research activities of MKLab are focused on cybersecurity solutions tailored to the water sector and on the data compatibility with existing data models, including also satellite data and information from social media platforms for enhanced interoperability.