Current Projects

IWRM Integrated Water Resource Management in the Lower Jordan Rift Valley: SMART- Move Management of Highly Variable Water Resource in Semi-Arid Regions

Project manager: Dr. Naser Almanaseer

SMART-Move is one of the pioneer and unique development projects in Jordan, and in the Middle East. It provides principals and applications of decentralized wastewater management in way that simulates the European approach considering conditions such as wastewater characteristics and climatic variability in Jordan and in the Arab Region. Further, this project focuses on decentralized wastewater treatment and reuse as a management strategy to alleviate demand on conventional water resources. The project provides demonstration, operation and maintenance of decentralized wastewater treatment technologies and it builds on and completes the efforts exerted earlier in the previous SMART and SMART 2 projects by the design and operation of a competence facility for demonstration, decentralized wastewater management in Fuhais within the premises of Fuhais wastewater treatment plant and in coordination with the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI). This facility provides services in demonstration, research and training. These services cannot be found in one spot but in this facility and it helps researchers and institutions from Jordan and from the Arab Region as well.

In collaboration with Helmholtz Environmental Center (UFZ) from Germany, and in coordination with MWI, SMART-Move provides fund to Al-Balqa’ applied University to sustain, operate, maintain, and monitor the facility and other technologies on the region for the project life time, that is July 1, 2005 through January 31, 2008, in a total budget of 62500 Euro. This money is allocated to cover the cost for staff, laboratory, operation costs, and minor maintenance. It’s worth mentioning that in this project we consider hiring female engineers but with competitive qualifications to ensure gender equity.

In addition, SMART-Move follow up on the previously constructed technologies at ten private homes and institutions. Hence, the project is providing competence research and tangible community services at a time. Further, the activities of SMART-Move and its various contributions helped MWI form a National Committee for Decentralized Wastewater Management. Dr. NaserAlmanaseer from Al-Balqa’ Applied University is part of this committee and therefore a significant contribution from BAU toward serving the society as well as the governmental institutions. Moreover, SMART-Move emphasis on the role of BAU at International Research and Development activities and projects and voluntarily provided several contributions on the form of talks, training, and awareness activities in wastewater management.

The primary partner of SMART-Move project is Helmholtz Environmental Research (UFZ), in Germany. The project is implemented in coordination with the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation.

SMART-Move aims at the evaluation of the performance of a range of decentralized wastewater treatment technologies under local conditions, mainly wastewater features and climatic settings.

The ownership and supervision on the facility of decentralized wastewater management located in Fuhais are transferred to BAU including all equipment and technologies. This has been done by the ownership agreement signed by UFZ and BAU in coordination with MWI. Around 10 designs of wastewater treatment technologies were executed at homes and institution.

Description of the project

The expected results of the project are listed as follows:

• Come up with the optimum technology that fits the local technical and climatic settings
• Design and operate a competence facility for decentralized wastewater management and reuse
• Document the outcomes of the project in the form of one Master Thesis, and publish one peer-reviewed journal article
• contribute to the marketing of wastewater policies in Jordan and in the region Build the capacities of selected engineers in operation, maintenance, and monitoring of decentralized wastewater treatment units.

The facility could be unique entity that helps improve the ranking of BAU. However, this required a plan to disseminate the outcomes of this project in commercial ways and therefore this required skillful people with accumulated and specific experience. In fact, the project has made significant steps in this regard, toward transforming the facility into training center. However, this starts with a concept note that Dr. NaserAlmanaseer is currently writing and is expected to be finalized by him some time during the third quarter of 2017. Afterwards, this concept needs to be approved by BAU in order to start promoting the outcomes of the project, to be specific that facility.

The project is achieving its goals in effective and steady manner, and this effectiveness can be observed and measured at short term and long term as well. For example, the development of the national decentralized wastewater management strategy in coordination with MWI is a clear sign for the significant contribution of SMART-Move at long-term.