CityPoll conference
Urban runoff pollutants: occurrence and impacts on freshwater ecosystems, and mitigation strategies.
0. Welcome message
The CityPoll consortium welcomes you to the Conference “Urban Runoff Pollutants: Occurrence and Impacts on Freshwater Ecosystems, and Mitigation Strategies.” As urban areas continue to expand, the challenges associated with managing urban runoff and its impacts on freshwater ecosystems are increasingly pressing. Pollutants from urban runoff can have far-reaching consequences on water quality and biodiversity and functions of freshwaters ecosystems. Overall, we must look for trade-offs which may support aquatic conservation while providing essential services to our cities.
In the Conference we will explore the occurrence and sources of urban runoff pollutants, their direct and indirect impacts on freshwater ecosystems, and the innovative strategies we may employ to mitigate their effects. Our hope is that through this meeting, we can deepen our understanding on the impacts of urban runoff, that will help preserve and restore freshwater ecosystems in the face of growing urbanization.
This meeting aims to collect and discuss results from ongoing research, interact with stakeholders and managers of urban runoff, and collectively engage in better diagnoses and collaborative solutions. Together, we can make meaningful progress on this important issue.
We therefore invite you to join the Conference in San Sebastian/Donosti next June 2025!
Sergi Sabater, on behalf of the Organizing Committee of the “Urban runoff pollutants” Conference
1. General information
The purpose of this meeting is to share the knowledge and results acquired on the effects of urban runoff on freshwater ecosystems, to design policies, offer recommendations, and to provide knowledge and exchange information among related institutions. To this end, the meeting will be divided into two parts:
The first part will be conducted in Spanish and will be addressed to authorities, managers, and municipal technicians, with the aim of informing, sharing, and discussing the applicability of management measures and/or recommendations.
The second part will be conducted in English and will have an academic focus, where studies related to the topic will be shared among different institutions and research centers through oral and poster presentations. This part will consist of three different topic sessions, each one led by a keynote speaker:
1. Urban runoff hydrology and modelling: This session will explore the digitalization and modelling of hydraulic behaviour in sewer systems, urban drainage areas, and receiving water bodies. We aim to collect monitoring examples of transport of urban pollutants and their pathways and impacts on water systems.
2. Urban runoff pollutants: This session aims to collect studies on multiple contaminants associated with urban runoff, their sources, and their relevance to stormwater quality.
3. Urban runoff impacts on freshwater ecosystems: The session will collect presentations on the impacts of urban runoff on freshwater communities, including effects on their diversity, physiological or behavioural responses, and ecotoxicological effects. Presentations are welcome from the single cells to the whole ecosystems.
📅 Dates: 12th and 13th of June 2025
🖥️ Hybrid connection on Thursday morning.
📍 Meeting location: Room 3.4 at Ignacio Maria Barriola Zentroa, Pl. de Elhuyar, 1, 20018, Donostia-San Sebastian, (Gipuzkoa), Basque Country.
2. Program
KEYNOTES
1. José Anta
"Providing data to our models: innovative solutions for urban stormwater monitoring"
2. Mira Petrovic
"Urban runoffs as a source of organic micropollutants in aquatic environment. Investigating chemical composition using advanced analytical tools"
3.Ana Previšić
"From freshwater to land: Ecological transport of emerging contaminants and its implications for ecosystem Health"
The round table will be conducted in Spanish and is specifically intended for municipal and regional authorities, managers and technicians. Moreover, a hybrid connection will take place during the round table for those who need it. Nevertheless, all conference registrants interested in attending are welcome to participate.
3. Call for abstracts
Abstract submission for oral presentations and posters will be sent via the registration form.
You can use this template as guideline for abstract submission: Template_Abstract_CityPoll
Deadline for registration and abstract submission: May 1st, 2025.
4. Format and guidelines
Oral presentations will last 12-15 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions at the end of the presentation.
A 3-5 minute presentation will be given for each poster. The dimensions for the posters must be 1000mm x 700mm.
5. Committee
Aitor Larrañaga, University of the Basque Country (EHU)
Anna Freixa, Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA-CERCA)
Arturo Elosegi, University of the Basque Country (EHU)
Ioar de Guzmán, University of the Basque Country (EHU)
Isabel Cadena, Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA-CERCA)
Isabel Muñoz, University of Barcelona (UB)
Itxaso Martínez, University of Barcelona (UB)
Julene González, University of the Basque Country (EHU)
Maite Arroita, University of the Basque Country (EHU)
Margarita Menéndez, University of Barcelona (UB)
Mira Petrovic, Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA-CERCA)
Neus Besolí, Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA-CERCA)
Núria de Castro, University of Barcelona (UB)
Oriol Gutiérrez, Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA-CERCA)
Sergi Sabater, Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA-CERCA)
6. The city and the venue
By plane
San Sebastián has 3 airports (2 international) within just over 100 km of the city.
Only 20 kilometers from the city center, San Sebastián Airport has connections to the major Spanish cities; Madrid and Barcelona. Bilbao Airport, with connections to all Europe, is 105km from the city, and Biarritz Airport, served by French and international low-cost companies, 47km.
San Sebastian Airport – San Sebastian city center:
The San Sebastian Airport is 20km away from the city. Bus tickets can be bought at the Airport for the lines E30 and E21.
E30 line information and time-table.
E21 line information and time-table.
Bilbao Airport – San Sebastian city center:
A 75 minutes’ drive by bus connects the Airport of Bilbao with San Sebastian. Tickets can be bought online through the PESA bus company website.
Here you can check the time-table.
Biarritz Airport – San Sebastian city center:
A 50 minutes’ drive by bus connects the Airport of Bilbao with San Sebastian. Tickets can be bought online through the Alsa bus company website.
By train
Euskotren is an underground railway system, including the Metro Donostialdea, a narrow-gauge train connecting Bilbao with cities along the Basque coast, such as Zarautz. The service also links Hendaye (France) and the French SNCF rail service with Lasarte, passing through Donostia.
RENFE offers both long-distance and suburban train services. The train station in the center of San Sebastián, the ‘Estación del Norte,’ provides connections to numerous Spanish cities, including Madrid and Barcelona, as well as international destinations such as Paris and Lisbon.
7. Accomodation near the meeting
8. Registration
Please fill in the registration form to register for the conference, either as a presenter or an attendee. If registering as a presenter, please include your abstract with the form.
Once the form is complete, we will contact you to confirm the acceptance of your abstract and proceed with registration confirmation.
9. Conference photos
10. Dissemination and communication
CityPoll will organize a series of events at regional and national scales.
The main objective of the publications, workshops and conferences is to assure project visibility, public activities, dissemination of the CityPoll research findings and to engage the relevant stakeholders.
CityPoll addresses the challenge to promote a toxic-free contribution from urban settlements to freshwater ecosystems, by understanding the running mechanisms, by deploying the most adequate solutions to mitigate this impact, and by disseminating potential solutions to stakeholders. The main impact of CityPoll is contributing to municipal, regional and national strategic approaches on urban water ecosystems, by better aligning science with management and policy demands. Complementing cutting edge natural science research, the project attends to human activities that contribute to runoff contamination. Particular attention is paid to domestic practices involving the use of water that directly impacts runoff quality.
Conferences
CityPoll will organize a series of events at regional and national scales, and a CityPoll Final Conference. The conferences chosen for this purpose will not only be science-oriented, but also those including policy aspects and consequently with a strong participation of policy makers. We here will consider Public authorities such as Municipality governors, regional and national authorities of the two CityPoll case studies (Municipality of Riudellots and Cassà; Municipality of Donostia-San Sebastián); Policy and decision makers, including the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition, Catalan Water Agency (ACA), Basque Water Agency (URA), Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro, Municipality of Donostia-San Sebastián; Professional networks such as SETAC, IWA, EFFS, or AIL.
Publications
We foresee the production of high quality, inter collaborative peer-reviewed papers, as an immediate scientific outcome of CityPoll. We are proposing publication of research papers in high impact SCI journals, prioritizing quality over quantity. Open access (gold or green) will be granted to all scientific publications resulting from CityPoll. All project publications will be made available in an open repository compliant with the EU OpenAire platform (i.e. the institutional repositories of involved partners, as well as the repository of European Commission Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/)). Professional publications in the form of technical reports and booklets will also be produced to publicize the different protocols described in the CityPoll project. According to the high multidisciplinarity of the team we expect multiple datasets to be collected in an online database (repository) with as much metadata as possible. The main datasets will consist of chemical concentrations, ecological data, physical online data and geographic digitized data.
Outreach
The experimental results obtained during the development of the project will be presented at national and international conferences and exhibitions, and, where possible, will be made available to an extended audience. Public reconnaissance can be measured by the appearance in mass media. CityPoll will cooperate with media departments at partner institutions to make news releases, including newspapers, radio and TV targeting non-scientific specialized readers. We will produce a TV documentary video of 20-40’, explaining the problem of urban runoff, the main chemical products it may contain, its main ecotoxicological and ecological risks, as well as the potential Nature Based Solutions, especially linked to buffer strips useful to minimize impacts on receiving urban rivers. In addition, CityPoll will create an account for social communication, allowing interactions with the public at Twitter and Instagram.
Leave us a message and let’s talk about CityPoll
