Many cities all around the world are currently facing major water-related challenges; too much water from flooding, too little water from droughts or just contaminated water. These challenges are brought about by climate change, and global trends of urbanisation.
People are moving to cities all over the globe, and more people are now living in urban areas than in rural areas, which is posing new water-related challenges; chief among them being the disposal of wastewater, the ability to supply clean drinking water, and managing extreme precipitation.
The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) established Water DTU in 2014 to resolve water-related challenges facing major cities by adopting an interdisciplinary approach to identify new solutions in the field of water management. This interdisciplinary approach task force will include experts from 11 departments and coordinated by DTU Diplom. The departments will include researchers from DTU Environment, management experts from DTU Management Engineering, civil engineers from DTU Civil Engineering, and statisticians and modellers from DTU Compute amongst others.
This approach is probably the first holistic method of handling the water problems facing global cities, and will look at the problem from various angles; it will include risk analyses, precipitation simulations, sustainable technologies, water technologies, and even traffic and system analyses so that ‘smart liveable cities’ can be created for the future.
Future plans include cooperation from DTU Space, DTU Fotonik, and DTU Nanotech who will combine new futuristic methods of automation, monitoring, notification, and control of water flows inside and outside of the major cities.
As Peter Steen Mikkelsen, Head of Water DTU and Professor at DTU Environment stated, the water problems that are facing big cities globally cannot be resolved by focusing solely on the water problem; new software and new working methods that allow traffic and water engineers to work in cooperation with architects and planners to create sustainable cities for the future.
I, for one, look forward to seeing the results of this study, as this is a world-first, and a breakthrough in the quest to resolve the water problems in a holistic, sustainable way that will serve us well in the future and ensure that there is access to fresh drinking water for all for a long time to come as well as sufficient water for other purposes.
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