About the project
LIFEH2OBUS is a project co-founded by the European Union, with the aim of building a European best practice for water management amongst bus operators, working within the public transport sector, with the aim of reducing water consumption to the lowest possible level. This is the first time the EU has initiated a water management project within the public transport sector.
During the project, information will be gathered through the use of an innovative software system which will assess and determine best practice. The system will be flexible enough to adapt to different economic and geographical/climate contexts. It is hoped that the best practise processes established through this project will then be shared and adopted throughout European bus operators and be implemented as widely as possible.
It is expected that the LIFEH2OBUS initiative will contribute to the transport sector moving closer towards its sustainability and circularity objectives, while providing the bus operator community with guidelines to successfully implement the most impactful solutions as well as highlighting publicly the importance of water conservation as part of the sustainability agenda.
Duration: 42 months, from August 1st 2022
Goals and purpose
During the life of the project, three different water-saving solutions will be tested and compared in three different Arriva depots in Europe. The depots have been selected to provide a variety of economic, geographic and climate conditions so that the data is relevant across all parts of Europe. The first two depots to take part will be located in Grugliasco, Italy, Požega, Croatia and Budapest, Hungary.
The three initiatives include:
- Wastewater reclamation and re-cycling;
- Wastewater reclamation and re-cycling in combination with rainwater harvesting systems
- Trial of a new external waxing technique which removes the need for water to be used in vehicle cleaning.
Arriva will be working in partnership with two other organisations during the project: Pluservice will implement and customise the Intelligent Garage Management system, which will gather and monitor the testing framework while University La Sapienza will analyse the operational, environmental and economic data and provide a final matrix, analysing each location and the techniques used with an efficiency score, as well as documenting the costs and the pros and cons in their application.
LIFEH2OBUS will eventually provide all bus transport operators with a dashboard function that could help them to choose the best water management solution for them, demonstrating also that shifting from a preventive to a predictive cleaning maintenance activity can truly help to reduce water consumption, better manage water resources and save time.
Benefits in numbers
LIFEH2OBUS will help the transport sector move towards its sustainability and circularity goals, while providing the bus operator community with guidelines.
It is expected that LIFEH2OBUS will reduce water consumption by 84 % on average. This equates to a saving of 37 million litres of water
Project results will be shared across both public and private transportation sectors to encourage the largest possible uptake across the industry, while providing public authorities with solid data and a valuable tool to generate new protocols or guidelines for water saving in the transport sector.
Participants
- Arriva Italia
- Arriva Hungary
- Arriva Croatia
- Pluservice
- Università degli studi di Roma La Sapienza
Maria Vittoria Corazza (PI) and Daniela D’Alessandro, Paola Di Mascio, Laura Moretti, Letizia Appolloni (team members)
Contacts: mariavittoria.corazza@uniroma1.it
