Water availability and management are increasingly important challenges for Catalonia. Episodes of drought, variability in rainfall and the effects of climate change highlight the need to move towards a more efficient use of water resources and to develop new tools to ensure their availability and quality. In this context, research and innovation play an important role in generating knowledge and transforming it into solutions that can be applied across different sectors and territories.
In line with this approach, IRTA organised the WAVEMAKER Business Creation Award Spain 2026 this Tuesday, 15 September, a nationwide EIT Water event that brought together startups, spin-offs and entrepreneurial projects in Barcelona with innovative solutions to the main water-related challenges.
Throughout the event, participants worked with mentors and experts to assess their proposals from different perspectives, including technical and market validation, regulation, scalability and the preparation of potential pilot projects. The event thus combined expert knowledge with the development of solutions with real-world application potential.
The event featured the participation of Ignasi Servià, an agricultural engineer and consultant specialising in irrigation, water management and territorial development, who provided an overview of the current and future challenges of water management. “In a context of climate crisis, water management poses challenges that go far beyond the availability of the resource. We must be able to explain to society the role of irrigated agriculture, make progress on governance and regulatory compliance and, above all, attract the talent needed to transform all the data we generate into useful knowledge for making better decisions,” Ignasi Servià highlighted.
The five participating projects showcased the diversity of solutions currently being developed to address water-related challenges. Acqua-e Group presented a proposal for the treatment and valorisation of sludge from wastewater treatment plants; Agrixels worked on the application of digital twins to optimise water use in irrigated agriculture; Fibsen presented fibre-optic sensing technology for monitoring water networks; Electraqua Tech, a spin-off specialising in electrochemical technologies, showcased solutions for advanced water treatment; and GRAPHEC Water Technologies presented electrochemical systems based on graphene electrodes for the removal of PFAS from water.
The proposals represent different priority areas of water innovation, ranging from improving the quality and treatment of water resources to reuse, monitoring, digitalisation and greater efficiency in water use within agri-food systems.
“Beyond presenting their solutions, the WAVEMAKER format has enabled the teams to assess their application potential with different expert profiles. The event combined mentoring sessions with the final presentation of the projects before the jury, with the aim of identifying the initiatives with the greatest potential for development and market uptake,” explained Simó Alegre, IRTA’s Director of Research and Innovation Development.
Events such as this make it possible to connect emerging solutions with the sector’s real needs. In an area as strategic as water, identifying promising technology is not enough; it is necessary to help validate it, connect it with the right stakeholders and create opportunities for it to reach the market and the territory.
Water is a cross-cutting area within IRTA’s research and knowledge transfer activities, particularly because of its relationship with agri-food systems and the need to increase their efficiency and resilience. Irrigation management, water reuse, water resource quality, system monitoring and digitalisation, and the adaptation of agriculture to water availability are some of the areas in which research can contribute to addressing this challenge.
In this context, innovation also requires facilitating the transfer of knowledge and new technologies to the sectors that can apply them and ensuring that they respond to specific needs. Connecting research centres, companies, public administrations and entrepreneurs is therefore one way to accelerate this process.
WAVEMAKER forms part of IRTA’s participation as a core partner of EIT Water, the European Knowledge and Innovation Community dedicated to promoting solutions to water-related challenges. IRTA has been part of this community since the end of 2025, together with leading European institutions such as Wageningen University and INRAE.
Through this participation, IRTA strengthens its activity in innovation and knowledge transfer in areas related to the sustainable management of water and water resources, particularly in relation to agri-food systems, the blue bioeconomy and resilience to climate change.
Through its participation in EIT Water and the organisation of initiatives such as WAVEMAKER, IRTA strengthens its capacity to connect research, innovation and knowledge transfer in an area that is strategic for the future of Catalonia, while helping to promote solutions that enable progress towards more efficient, sustainable and resilient management of water resources.
