Research and innovation are critical for the European Union to effectively address water resilience. The EU must connect scientific knowledge, operational experimentation, and large-scale deployment to create a continuous value chain. While existing technologies for water resilience have proven effective at pilot scales, their performance in full-scale, long-term conditions is poorly understood, hindering replication. Fragmentation in the EU water sector complicates progress, with many operators conducting isolated studies and tests, leading to costly duplications and slowed learning. To enhance water systems, Europe needs to better understand emerging pressures, accelerate the deployment of existing solutions, and foster cooperation among various stakeholders, ensuring local adaptability without resorting to over-centralisation. An effective strategy should consist of interconnected demonstration sites and knowledge hubs that utilise common standards and methodologies.

Taken together, APE's contribution to this consultation centres on the following proposals:

• A European Integrated Water Knowledge Programme, pooling qualified data, long-term observatories, digital twins and predictive models to close the sector's real gap: full-scale, long-term operational knowledge, not further laboratory science.
• A European Water Resilience Fast Track, recognising "test readiness" as an eligible investment cost and enabling mutual recognition of test results across Member States, so risk is shared rather than repeated by every operator.
• A stage-gated European funding framework, sequencing Horizon Europe through to Cohesion, LIFE and EIB instruments, genuinely additional to compliance investment and including dedicated support for replication, not only initial demonstration.
• A European Water Test Sites Network, built primarily on operators' own infrastructure, with a public Atlas of sites and a European Water Innovation Passport for standardised, transferable evidence. This network should encourage public-public partnerships between water operators, research organisations and other public-interest actors to develop, test and validate solutions based on shared knowledge, operational needs and long-term public value.
• A European Water Academy and skills programme to address the sector's technical talent gap.
• Harmonised methodologies and long-term observatories to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of protection measures and nature-based solutions, including who funds their long-term upkeep.
• A European Federated Water Data and Knowledge Space, with a responsible AI framework and open, independently benchmarked reference models so smaller operators are not locked into closed commercial tools.
• Systematic integration of the social sciences and humanities into water R&I, paired with a mechanism to adapt legal and regulatory frameworks so proven solutions can actually be deployed at scale.

Read Aqua Publica Europea's position paper on the Water Resilience Research and Innovation Strategy here.