Antimicrobial resistance in engineered wastewater systems – Predicting the impacts of dynamic exposure levels to antimicrobial agents on AMR attenuation and amplification

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) spread in the aquatic environment poses a growing public health risk with wastewater treatment (WWT), being the most important but still un-optimised barrier in confronting the global water and nutrient scarcity challenges.Europe’s Water Framework Directive aims to achieve good qualitative and quantitative status of all water bodies.

Challenges to the effective separation and recovery of water resources from hazardous materials, notably, antibiotic residues and AMR in WWT were recently identified.In the past, AMR spread was experimentally assessed at static antimicrobial exposure levels that may suffer from lack of environmental representativeness as a result of significant variations in the emission of antimicrobials in urban catchments.IDYEA takes on this challenge by (i) experimental modelling of dynamics in the occurrence and fate of selected antimicrobials; and (ii) developing dynamic simulation models for predicting AMR spread at different time scales in WWT.The inter-sectorial and interdisciplinary IDYEA will be hosted at University of Bath, and supported by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research.

It trains one experienced researcher in areas of process modelling, analytical chemistry, molecular microbiology and bioinformatics.

IDYEA will offer excellent opportunities for mutual knowledge exchange and technology development.IDYEA’s success is based on achieving the project objectives via seven work packages, including laboratory- and full-scale experimentation, model identification and risk assessment.To provide techno-economic solutions to AMR risk assessment as well as optimised process design and operation, the expected main outcome comprises dynamic process rate and stoichiometric relations for AMR spread.

IDYEA will disseminate results via public engagement, reaching out to especially young people, inspiring them to get involved with science to solve real-world problems, thus building our global water futures.