Water JPI 2018: Closing the Water Cycle Gap – Sustainable Management of Water Resources

Given decision: 2018-07-09 00:00

The call aims to enable transnational, collaborative research, development and innovation projects addressing questions relating to society's water challenges. The call is Water JPI's fifth, and the call consortium includes 20 funding agencies from 18 countries. The total budget is 19 000 000 euro (approximately 190 million Swedish crowns). Formas contribution is approximately 20 million Swedish crowns for the years 2019-2021.

Beslut

 

In many regions of Europe and other parts of the world, it may be difficult to reconcile water supply and demand both in terms of quantity and quality. Water resources observation, experimental work and modelling are required to better understand hydrological processes and their connection, and to analyse and forecast the effectiveness of management options. This will support improved decision-making to ensure the long-term availability of water resources and to enable the integrated management of water resources at the national, basin, and global scales. These approaches should also help mobilise investment in water management innovations and promote/encourage solutions in line with the objective of creating a circular economy. This call will cover three topics:

  • Enabling Sustainable Management of Water Resources
  • Strengthening Socio-economic Approaches to Water Management
  • Supporting Tools for Sustainable Integrated Management of Water Resources

The call text is published on the Water JPI website External link. including rules for themes and sub-themes that should be addressed in the application. A webinar about the call is organised on 12 March. More information will be published here.

Applicants write pre-proposal and full proposal in English and submit the application electronically via the call submission platform. The submission platform is hosted by the French national research agency ANR. You find it here: Link to Submission platform External link.

Important: Applicants from Sweden applying for funding from Formas and advanced to Step 2, will receive an invitation to submit their proposal in Prisma in Step 2. The information of how to submit the proposal in Prisma will be sent together with the invitation from Formas on 9th July 2018. Information about the exchange rate to be used for the Swedish budget will be included.

Eligibility

Projects should be comprised of a minimum of three partners from three different participating countries. Funding of the participating researchers will be provided by their respective national funding organisations, in accordance with their national eligibility conditions. Please read the National Regulations External link. and read also below the conditions that apply to applicants from Sweden.

Participating countries

Twelve countries are participating in the call: Belgium, Brazil, Cyprus, Egypt, Estonia, Finland France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia.

Call procedure

The call process takes place in two steps; the deadline for step 1 (overview-application) is 24 April 2018 (17.00 h CEST) and the deadline for step 2 (completed application) is 18 September 2018 (17.00 h CEST). Projects are expected to begin in April 2019.

Day of decision: Step 1 preliminary 09/07/2018, step 2 preliminary 08/02/2019

For general questions about the announcement and application process, including technical and administrative matters, contact the Call Secretariat:

Water JPI 2018 Joint Call Secretariat: ww17@formas.se

Kristina Laurell – Swedish Research Council Formas
Thao Le – Swedish Research Council Formas

Requirements for applicants from Sweden

What funding can be applied for

Support can be granted to research projects within the framework of all three topics of the call. Grants can be sought for costs that are associated with the execution of the project, such as salary costs for researchers or doctoral students, travel, conferences and workshops, sample collection, analysis and premises and other related costs (but not for scholarships or education grants for research students). Grants can be sought for costs for equipment under SEK 500,000. Grants can also be sought for costs related to publication in Open Access journals. Note that researchers who receive funding from Formas must guarantee that their research results will be available through Open Access within six months of publication.

Guidelines for funding amounts

The project duration must be between 24 and 36 months. Applicants from Sweden can apply for a maximum of € 300,000 for participation in a project and a maximum of € 400,000 if the applicant also is coordinating the project.

Applicants from Sweden must coordinate their application with other participants in the project. It is important that the total amount requested for a project, with at least 3 main researchers from three participating countries, does not exceed 1.5 million euros.

Who can apply

The applicant and the cooperate researches must have a doctoral degree. The grant may only be administered by a Swedish university, university college, research institute or authorities with research assignments. You can find out more by following this link External link..

From Sweden, applicants from the same grant administrating organisation shall belong to one PI (Prinicipal Investigator). Please read more about the PIs in the Call text published on the web-page for the Water JPI 2018 Joint Call. Several Swedish applicants from different grant administrating organisations may be part of a project, provided that the project includes PIs from two other countries. A PI, who is also a coordinator, cannot participate in any other project, either as a PI or as a coordinator.

The challenges faced by society necessitate a multidisciplinary approach. For that reason all applications must endeavour to include participants in the consortium from stakeholder groups and describe how the results will be disseminated and utilised. The participants from stakeholder groups may be "subcontractors" to a PI. It is important that the grant administrating organisation has approved the subcontractor when submitting the application. Formas does not grant funding to stakeholder groups or companies applying for project funding as a PI or coordinator.

Granted funding

Evaluation of all of the applications submitted to the Call Secretariat will be performed by international experts and the highest ranked applications will be discussed at a meeting in the autumn of 2018. Following evaluation and discussion, the international review panel will recommend the highest-ranked applications for funding. Each funding body has the final decision about granting funding to the respective applicant. The Formas Scientific Council is expected to reach its decisions in February 2019. Grant award decisions cannot be appealed. The funding awarded will be made public after the funding body has reached its decisions. Projects are expected to begin in April 2019.

Reporting of projects awarded funding

Each project awarded funding must submit a project report to Formas in the form of a financial and popular science summary in compliance with the decision.

Contact information

Responsible Senior Research Officer Formas
Kristina Laurell
Telephone: +46 (0)8 775 40 59
E-mail: kristina.laurell@formas.se

For general questions about the announcement and application process, including technical and administrative matters, contact the Call Secretariat:

Water JPI 2018 Joint Call Secretariat: ww17@formas.se

Kristina Laurell – Swedish Research Council Formas
Thao Le – Swedish Research Council Formas

The Swedish Research Council Formas is the funding organisation for Researchers applying from Swedish universities, university college or official Swedish organization that fulfils the Formas requirements for a grant administrator.

The Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIs) are intergovernmental initiatives aiming at strengthening European leadership and competitiveness in Research and Innovation (R&I). In particular, the Water JPI responds to the grand challenge of “Achieving Sustainable Water Systems for a Sustainable Economy in Europe and Abroad”.

Updated:7 February 2019