DALIA - Danube Lighthouse Innovation Action

DALIA is a Horizon Europe project for innovative water management solutions. The project has 9 pilot sites all across the Danube region to tackle different current water management issues. These pilot action will be evaluated and all the experiences will be shared through a knowledge hub (also established in the project). The assessed good practices will be replicated in another 10 sites of the region.
In the Danube River Basin lives 79 million inhabitants. As the Danube River Management Plan indicates the majority (52%) of all rivers do not meet the criteria of good chemical status, moreover all monitored indicators deteriorated. The Danube River is an artery of the ecosystems of the whole DRB and the region with significant environmental impact. The river also has an important economic utilization supporting SMEs, and creating jobs for locals as well as having a cultural importance. To properly manage this complex and fragile ecosystem we must think of a river basin and harmonize our
actions from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. DALIA (Danube Region Water Lighthouse Action) is comprised of 22 expert organizations – including universities, authorities, SMEs and NGOs – from 8 different Danube EU and Associated countries accumulating an outstanding set of knowledge, covering not only the basin geographically but all different fields of expertise necessary to deal with the
multidisciplinary issues from source to sea. The project brings to DRB integrated DALIA tool, which will be integrate into DAnube Mission Hub for better decision making to improve DRB restoration of fresh and transitional water ecosystems; it provides options for strategies and policies that concern freshwater ecosystem protection and ecosystem connectivity in DRB and improved protection of
local communities and ecosystems from extreme events and pollution threats. The DALIA project will contribute directly to the establishment of EU and UN initiatives, related to the further execution on the Water Framework Directive by the execution of innovative actions across a variety of geographies, their scaling and the multiplication of outcomes with a wider network of ecosystems and related EU Missions and project actions throughout framework .