LA SOCIETE WALLONNE DES EAUX

Their core work

LA SOCIETE WALLONNE DES EAUX (SWDE) is the principal drinking water utility for the Wallonia region of Belgium, responsible for producing, treating, and distributing water to millions of residents and businesses across the region. Their value in EU research is not as a laboratory actor but as an operational end-user: they contribute access to a large, live water distribution network — including its SCADA control systems and industrial automation infrastructure — as a real-world test environment for research on critical infrastructure resilience and cybersecurity. They also bring direct public health relevance to water quality research, particularly around chemical contaminants in drinking water. In short, they are the kind of partner that turns theoretical research into field-validated results.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

SWDE's first H2020 engagement (ATENA, 2016) was squarely in the cybersecurity and ICT resilience domain — protecting water and gas distribution SCADA systems from cyber threats and modelling how failures cascade across interdependent networks. Their second project (PROTECTED, 2017) shifted to water chemistry and public health, specifically the detection and risk assessment of endocrine-disrupting compounds in drinking water. These two tracks are not a strategic research evolution but rather two different faces of the same operational reality: a water utility that must both protect its control systems and guarantee the chemical safety of its output. No clear directional trend emerges — participation appears driven by operational relevance to specific calls rather than a cumulative research agenda.

SWDE's two projects point in different directions, suggesting they engage EU research opportunistically as an end-user test site rather than building toward a coherent research identity; a future collaborator should expect operational access and field validation capacity, not deep research leadership.

How they like to work

SWDE has never coordinated an H2020 project, always joining as a participant or third-party partner — the classic profile of an operational end-user rather than a research driver. In ATENA they worked within a large multi-national consortium of at least 24 partners across 13 countries, demonstrating capacity to function inside complex, distributed consortia without needing to manage them. This makes them an easy partner to bring in: they know how to operate inside large projects, contribute specific operational knowledge, and stay in their lane.

SWDE has connected with 24 unique partners across 13 countries, almost entirely through the ATENA consortium. Their network is European in breadth but thin in depth — two projects do not build the kind of recurring partnerships that signal a well-embedded research network.

What sets them apart

SWDE's differentiator is access: they operate one of Belgium's largest real-world water distribution networks, including active SCADA and industrial control systems, which is exactly what security and infrastructure research consortia need to validate their models against operational conditions. Few other Belgian entities can offer this combination of scale, operational legitimacy, and regulatory standing. For any consortium studying critical infrastructure protection, water quality, or utility cybersecurity, SWDE brings the field site that turns desktop research into deployable results.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ATENA
  Their only directly funded H2020 project (EUR 262,938), addressing real-time cyber threat assessment across interdependent water, gas, and electricity infrastructures — SWDE likely contributed live network topology and SCADA access as the water-sector end-user.
• PROTECTED
  Participation as a third party in a major endocrine disruptor research project signals SWDE's role as a water quality validation site — relevant given their public health obligations as a drinking water provider.