Floods are Europe’s most frequent and costly natural disaster — and when they strike, they do not just cause immediate damage. They mobilise decades of accumulated pollution, spreading complex mixtures of contaminants across soils and waterways long after the waters recede. The EU project FLOWSAFE – coordinated by the Spanish National Research Counsil – addresses this challenge by developing bio- and nature-based remediation solutions that combine phytoremediation, biostimulation, and bioaugmentation using native species, supported by biomaterials for pollutant capture. Target contaminants span metals, microplastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, PFAS, and excess nutrients. Solutions are validated at real EU flood-affected sites and guided by advanced sensor networks and Earth Observation data feeding into AI-assisted predictive models. The Complexity Science Hub Vienna contributes two core components: a knowledge graph integrating partner data on pollutants, biological agents, and remediation outcomes, which is queried as a network path-finding problem to identify optimal site-specific interventions given local sensor readings; and a terrain-based water diffusion model that simulates how pollutants and remediation agents spread across landscapes under different scenarios. Together, these tools support planners in designing interventions that align with the natural hydrology of each site. FLOWSAFE aims to deploy across 20,000 hectares at 20 high-value degraded sites, achieving over 80% mixed-pollutant removal and measurable gains in ecosystem resilience across the EU.

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Funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement ID: 101291038. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.