At the 18th edition of H2O – Accadueo 2025, held at BolognaFiere, Fabio Masi presented the European AWARD Project during a study day entirely dedicated to urban drainage, organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security (MASE) and the National Association of Area Governance Entities for Water and Waste (AneA), Figure 1.
Figure 1 – Fabio Masi presenting online at the 18th edition of H2O – Accadueo 2025
In his talk, Masi introduced the “sponge city” concept, illustrating it through the example of the Metropolitan City of Milan, which is implementing 90 Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SuDS) interventions across 32 municipalities, funded through the PNRR – Next Generation EU program.
Beyond the sponge city approach, Masi showcased the AWARD Project to demonstrate how metropolitan-scale urban drainage can be reimagined as a form of controlled aquifer recharge, thereby becoming an alternative water resource (AWR) for irrigation.
These sustainable drainage solutions allow urban runoff to infiltrate into the shallow aquifer, naturally replenishing groundwater reserves. The stored water can then be extracted through shallow wells and used for irrigation. This circular process embodies the alternative water resource (AWR) concept explored in Demo Case 2, illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2 – Alternative Water Resource (AWR) scheme proposed for Demo Case 2 and Metropolitan City of Milan.