Rationale and Goals

 

Tai Lake
Water is essential for human life, but its quality is threatened by multiple sources of pollution. The Sino-German research project SIGN will contribute towards improving water quality in the Taihu region close to Shanghai, China. A powerful consortium of research facilities, companies and concerned stakeholders was built in order to successfully manage the challenging research tasks of the SIGN project. From 2015 to 2018 the project consortium will work on both - the lake water itself serving as water resource and the drinking water for the megacities Wuxi and Suzhou.
 
Sustainable development of societies requires a sufficient supply of clean drinking water as well as abundant water resources with good water quality. For the last few decades, China has undergone very fast industrial and economic growth. Its areas of high population density have an increasing need for water. At the same time the raw water quality in China is often impaired due to anthropogenic pollution. Furthermore, the available water resources in China are low (only 1/4 of the world average) and unevenly distributed with high water scarcity in the dry North of the country.