Specialty Chief Editors, Paolo Perona from the University of Edinburgh and Björn Vinnerås at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) lead the Water and Wastewater Management Section within Frontiers in Environmental Science.

Managing water as part of the Sustainable Development Goals

Paolo Perona

Paolo Perona, who is the Chair of Environmental Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, believes that a “broad cooperation is needed across science to meet keywater security objectives of the UN Sustainable Development Goals”. Water and Wastewater Management will offer a timely forum to tackle increasingly urgent issues such as the effects of climate change and urbanization on surface and ground water redistribution and storage, sustainable use and quality, whose flow-on effects to flood, energy and ecosystems, are affecting political and socio-economic problems of both humid and arid regions worldwide.

Björn VInnerås

Science innovations to support wastewater treatment

“We can’t rely on nature anymore to neutralize wastewater for reuse,” explains Björn Vinnerås in highlighting the importance of innovation and technology to facilitate wastewater treatment and reuse processes. As an Assistant Professor and expert in Wastewater Management in the Department of Energy and Technology at SLU, Björn Vinnerås is keen to explore the boundaries of innovation in wastewater systems in this new section, particularly with regards to upstream work and recycling.

Regions most affected by water and wastewater issues must have access to the latest research

Both agree that OpenAccess publishing is critical to the mission of the section and the success of the community in finding new and innovative solutions to urgent global problems. Water and wastewater issues disproportionately affect regions where access to research is most limited, and they are keen to emphasize the importance of these regions gaining firsthand and timely research knowledge.

Pioneering, High-Quality Research in sustainable water resource management

The Water and Wastewater Management section will provide the freedom to publish high-quality original and innovative research in integrated and sustainable water resource management. Key areas include: uses and processes involving surface- and groundwater bodies, engineering techniques with a focus on upstream work, virtual water networks, innovative solutions in humid, semi-arid and arid regions, analytical and numerical modelling as well as the use of innovative algorithms devoted to the use of big-data analyses.

Water and wastewater management 

“At the end of the day, it’s not about either/or – it’s both,” explainsBjörn Vinnerås. Water is the key resource sustaining almost all ecosphere processes and research on management aspects of water bodies and wastewater fractions is fundamental to ensure the sustainable use and redistribution of the global resource.

The Water and Wastewater Management section is now open for submissions and welcomes high-quality articles and topical themed article collection proposals across the breadth of the field. Follow us on Twitter: @FrontEnvSci

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