WERF WORKSHOP ON TRACE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS: MAPPING A COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH ROADMAP

Recently, the Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) hosted a workshop on trace organic compounds in wastewater, reclaimed water and receiving waters. Workshop attendees included representatives from the U.S., Japan, Singapore, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, Australia, and South Africa. During the workshop, invited participants from 27 different organizations shared their organizations' research plans and worked in groups to develop a research roadmap that is a compilation of those plans. This research roadmap is a preliminary tool that summarizes ongoing and future research plans and directions of participating organizations. The roadmap is intended to assist organizations in finding partners for future collaboration, leverage resources and improve communication among organizations worldwide who are researching trace organic compounds. In addition to the research roadmap, workshop participants also discussed future inter-organization collaboration and came up with general guidelines and specific recommendations for continuing the dialogue on trace organic compounds in the future. Based on the findings of the workshop, WERF is currently in the process of refining their own 2 million research plan on trace organic compounds and formulating Requests for Proposal (RFPs) to address short-term needs, particularly in the area of communicating research findings to technical and non-technical audiences.