URGENT aims to promote green & blue infrastructure and nature-based solutions (GBI&NBS) for resilient, climate-friendly and liveable cities in IN & MN (partner countries – PCs) through ICT-enhanced tertiary education linked to labour markets & wider stakeholder circles. This aim will be achieved through the following objectives:1. To upgrade GBI&NBS -relevant BSc, MSc & PhD programs at PIs to make them end-user-oriented & policy-relevant. A pool of URGENT e-courses will be tailored to fit educational needs of learners from science, engineering & planning (154 ECTS of new and updated subjects openly available via e-learning). An URGENT research framework will outline internationally- & policy-relevant research topics, questions & methodology suggestions.2. To develop shared UREGENT Collaborative Learning Platform & online training services of the new generation for qualitative improvement of the education process & academic workflow support among universities & stakeholders (URBAN_learn).3. To create sustainable feedback mechanisms to end-users, ensuring adaptive & practice-relevant teaching contents, knowledge co-production opportunities and stakeholder support to post-project course development & teaching. URGENT stakeholder interactive platforms (SIPs) in PCs will assemble representatives of praxis communities involved to GBI&NBS issues. SIPs will be platforms for academia to disseminate innovative ideas, visions of the future and inform evidence-based management, while praxis partners contribute with their in-hand experiences & know-hows, review curricula, participate QA mechanisms & support graduates’ entry to workplace.4. To develop capacity for academic mobility, shared experimental facilities and joint research by PIs & beyond. URGENT partners will institutionalise their relationship through framework agreements, and set-up rules for physical & virtual mobility, joint research & thesis supervision and common use of research & experimental facilities.

The increased demand for drinking water from habited zones combined with continued pollution of freshwater sources due to inadequate collection and treatment of wastewater, is a statement of challenge and also a window of opportunity common to India and Europe. Unlike in Europe, the water and sanitation scenario in developing countries like in India is a matter of serious concern and more challenging. The main aim of this project is to validate, deploy or develop cost-effective & sustainable solutions to tackle water challenges and ensure the provision of safe water reuse, rejuvenate water quality of rivers, and restore ecosystems in India. This will be achieved by deploying & developing water / wastewater technologies, and use of sensors for emerging and traditional contaminants. Further, it also aims to develop new management & planning strategies and enable better monitoring of pollution levels in real-time modes. This will not only contribute to the development of sustainable technologies to cope with water shortages in rural and urbanised areas in India, but also in Europe, where climate change is expected to induce a changing and uncertain precipitation pattern and an enhancement in temperature. It will assess and enhance the potential of natural and technical water treatment systems to suit the local hydro-geological conditions. Moreover, the projects will assess and validate different wastewater and water management plans. Besides the technical aspects, research will also cover financial, environmental and institutional sustainability of those systems in order to develop and bring to the market a cost-efficient multi-barrier water management approach by building capacity.