Tuesday, September 7, 2021, 13:30-15:00 CEST

The monitoring of wastewater is important for a variety of health and environmental reasons. For example, it helps us increase freshwater supplies to combat water scarcity, enhance operational efficiencies and address sources of pollutants.

Screening municipal wastewater for viruses and environmental pollutants is not a new concept. However, COVID-19 has shed light on just how relevant it is. In June 2020, as part of its COVID-19 webinar series, GWOPA/GIZ opened a lively discussion between utilities on wastewater monitoring.

As part of GWOPA’s 2021 webinar series, this session will bring together experts in the urban sanitation and wastewater fields as well as water/wastewater utilities from different regions to hear about challenges, solutions and outlooks related to wastewater-based epidemiology.

Presentations will showcase the most recent state of research, before presenting and discussing utility experiences on the following questions:

• What are the benefits of using wastewater to track the spread of infectious diseases?
• What good practices, sampling methods and (low-cost) tools exist to monitor wastewater for viruses and other pollutants?
• What needs to be done to enable and/or strengthen SARS-CoV-2 monitoring as part of wastewater monitoring systems?
• What type of support do they need and receive?
• What are the possibilities around peer-to-peer exchange on wastewater monitoring?

The webinars will be simultaneously translated into English, French and Spanish.

Conference registration