30 innovative ideas to fight water scarcity

The EIT project Finding innovative solutions for water scarcity in Southern Europe is bringing together 30 start-ups from all over Europe to provide solutions to this issue. In the next three months the start-ups will receive training and advice and the best ones will receive an economical award. The programme will end with a final competition between the start-ups to be held in Spain.

According to the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) the food production consumes 70% of the world’s freshwater resources. This data is of particular concern to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), which has launched an initiative to find solutions to water scarcity, with a focus on Southern Europe. The project Finding innovative solutions for water scarcity in Southern Europe is organized by EIT Food, in collaboration with EIT Climate, EIT Manufacturing, EIT Raw Materials, and the support of Athena technology center and Bioazul consulting.

Three events organized in Spain, Italy and Greece will bring together a total of 30 start-ups that will provide innovative ideas on how to solve water scarcity, a problem that currently affects a third of Europe, but that is expected to become a major issue for the entire region in just a few decades. The selected start-ups will receive personalized training, advice and mentoring for three months. The work of the start-ups will conclude with a final competition between them, the InnoWise Challenge Lab, that, in the case of Spain, will take place in Malaga on the 24^th September, during the Smart-Agrifood congress. Similar competitions will take place in Italy and Greece. The two best start-ups of each final competition will win prizes of 10,000 euros for the first and 5,000 for the second. These events will be held face-to-face whenever the situation of the Covid-19 allows it.

The 30 start-ups selected for this project are the following ones:

1. A+ Smart Farms
2. Airbots Agritech
3. BLUETENTACLES
4. BrioAgro
5. CAPTIVE SYSTEMS
6. Compound Analytics
7. detektia
8. Develiot
9. Etna Digital Growth
10. FATA MORGANA
11. FS Group Consulting
12. GoToDigital The Learning Company
13. Graniot
14. Groots
15. Hacking Ecology
16. Magila
17. MATRIX Information Technologies
18. Métrica6
19. moresense
20. MYWATER d.o.o.
21. REFIX – Alkaline Sea Water
22. Savia Atmospheric Fountains & Rivers
23. SCUBIC – Smart Software Solutions
24. solmeyea
25. SpaceCrop
26. SPHERAG TECK IOT
27. Themis WRT
28. UrbanFood
29. Vestigia Blockchain
30. WEAS – Aquacorp