“Today, water shortage is becoming a worldwide problem. Big cities from time to time face water scarcity especially during hot summer periods. Water consumption per capita has tended to lessen, however it is still not enough to have sufficient reserves. In 2008 in Barcelona water in reservoirs dropped below 18% of capacity and that water was not drinkable anymore. This illustrates that water management in our cities has to be revised to avoid that kind of issue in the future. One of the approaches to decrease the demand could be paying more attention to recycled water. Recycling represents only 5% from all water sources. There are some problems associated with recycling. First of all, all treatment plants that we have in cities today are centralised, so we spend a lot of energy on transporting waste water back and forth. Another issue that cities have to tackle in order to become sustainable is the urban heat island effect and its consequences. Microclimate control is not easy and it requires additional resources and could provide extra expenditures for the city budget. This project is an effort to rethink water usage and find an alternative way to treat water. The aim is to benefit microclimate conditions in 28 blocks of Poblenou by using decentralized water treatment plants.”

Optimizing water distribution through digitally interconnected buildings.