The regeneration and re-use of contaminated land and groundwater is an important ambition of European sustainable development strategies. Managing the legacy of contaminated sites across Europeand improving the quality and quantity of groundwater resources requires the development of innovative and sustainable remediation concepts, which must consider a range of environmental, technical, social and economic factors. Decision-making frameworks must also be developed for successful implementation of sustainable remediation strategies. In situ remediation (ISR) is typically the most sustainable approach for soil and groundwater contamination, with the potential to manage complex problemswhich would not be possible with traditional methods. However, many ISR concepts and applications remain under-developed inEurope. Meeting these challenges requires a more integrated analysis represented in this project.ADVOCATE (Advancing sustainable in situ remediation for contaminated land and groundwater) is a multidisciplinary consortium of 20 academic and industry partners across 5 European countries, which will research fundamental science, processes and innovative technology applications in the field of in situ remediation (www.theadvocateproject.eu). The network will provide high-quality research training to young scientists, through fully-funded Early Stage Researcher (PhD level) and Experienced Researcher (Post-doctoral level) fellowships. The academic partners include leading European university research groups in this field. The industry partners include all stakeholder interests (site owners, commercial R&D, regulatory bodies, water utilities, consulting firms, public outreach, SMEs and multinationals). The team of 14 fellows employed by ADVOCATE will research scientific topics which cover a wide range of important pollutant problems within the training themes described below. The project has an international advisory group and will undertake a comprehensive programme of knowledge transfer activities with other scientific networks and industry bodies in this field. The fellowships in ADVOCATE will start in October 2011. Research training themesADVOCATE will provide applied research training in the following areas :
- Socio-economic and sustainability aspects of in situ remediation
- Linking soil and vadose zone processes to in situ remediation of groundwater
- Groundwater-surface water interaction and in situ remediation
- In situ remediation of metal-contaminated sites
- Developing in situ treatment strategies for mixed contaminants
- Enhancing bioremediation processes
- Performance assessment of natural attenuation at field scale
- Network knowledge transfer and research dissemination
Research training partnersThe research training partners in ADVOCATE are :
- UniversityofSheffield(www.shef.ac.uk/)
- Université de Liège (www.ulg.ac.be/)
- Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (www.ufz.de/)
- EAWAG (www.eawag.ch/)
- Krakow University of Science and Technology (www.agh.edu.pl/)
- Contaminated Land: Applications in Real Environments Ltd (www.claire.co.uk)
- Flemish Institute for Technological Research (www.vito.be/)
- Hydrogeotechnika Ltd (www.hydrogeotechnika.pl/)
- Federal Office of the Environment of Switzerland (www.bafu.admin.ch/)