Water Footprint Network announced Global Water Footprint Standard training courses in four countries.
The courses are designed for professionals from businesses, governments, and academia including consultancies advising corporations or governments.
The Netherlands, Amsterdam Water Footprint Assessment Methodology & Application
Date: 28-30 May 2013
This three day course is split into two sessions: (I) Water Footprint Assessment Concepts and Methodology (May 28/29) and (II) Implementing Water Footprint Assessment (May 30).
Korea, Seoul Water Footprint Assessment Course
Date: 28 May 2013
Participants learn how to apply the Water Footprint Assessment methodology, ultimately contributing to better water governance and more sustainable water strategies.
South Africa, Pretoria Global Water Footprint Standard Training Course
Dates: 8-10 October 2013
Customized materials will be presented to meet the specific demands of the professionals in Africa interested in learning about Water Footprint Assessment and applying it in their daily practice.
Spain, Madrid Curso De Huella HÍdrica Aplicada Al Sector Empresarial
Date: 22 May 2013
Organized by Fundación Botín in collaboration with Water Footprint Network
At the official Academic Closing ceremony of the UNESCO-IHE 111 students from 49 countries received their Masters of Science degree after completing their 18 months study from 2011 to 2013.
The diploma awarding took place in the Old Church in Delft on 25 April.
Hard work: 3,000 hours of study
The students were welcomed by the Rector, Prof. András Szöllösi-Nagy, who reminded them of their first days at the Institute, suffering through the cold, the many lecturing hours, the 3,000 hours of study and hard work and even biting into their first herring and stroopwafel.
The traditional walk from the UNESCO-IHE education institute to the Old Church takes professors and students through the historical city centre of Delft.
Prof. Dr. Fritz Holzwarth, Chairperson of the UNESCO-IHE Governing Board, Deputy Director General for Water Management, German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, addressed the participants in his welcome address and called upon their duty to make a difference in the world.
Make a difference
Graduation speaker Mr. Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) then delivered his keynote address and told a tale from when he was only nine years old when he was given a weather station.
A device that triggered his fascination for forecasting and measuring the different data. He never knew that one day he would be spearheading WMO and told the graduates that they need to find their passion and drive to make a difference.
New generation water leaders
Brenda Chimombe from Zimbabwe (left) and Bipin Dangol from Nepal (right) followed with a short student address and toast to a new generation of water leaders: people who will make a difference where they may return to.
About UNESCO-IHE
UNESCO-IHE is the largest international postgraduate water education facility in the world and is based in Delft, the Netherlands. The Institute confers fully accredited MSc degrees, and PhD degrees in collaboration with partners in the Netherlands.
Since 1957 the Institute has provided postgraduate water education to more than 14,500 water professionals from over 160 countries.
This news item was originally published on the website of Unesco-IHE.
(see this page also for a video recording of whole ceremony)
More information
Unesco-IHE
Delft, the Netherlands
+31 15 215 1715 www.unesco-ihe.org
Coastal reinforcements are not necessarily ugly. That proved the Spanish architect Manuel de Solà-Morales when he designed the new reinforced boulevard of Scheveningen, the Hague, the Netherlands.
The boulevard combines the construction of a new underground dike with an eye-catching designed seaside resort.
The new boulevard Scheveningen was officially opened by mayor Jozias van Aartsen and Dutch minister of infrastructure Melanie Schultz van Haegen on April 6.
Three flood protection meassures
In order to protect the coastal city of The Hague from future flooding, Scheveningen boulevard had to be reinforced. The water board Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland is formally responsible for the flood protection and constructed a 1 kilometer long and 12 metres high sea wall and nourished the beach with 2 million cubic meter sand.
By widening the beach and by constructing a curve sea wall, the power of the waves diminish, allowing the wall to be less high. This made it possible keep the reinforcements fully underground and invisibly integrated in the new boulevard.
Wonderful ambiance
The city of The Hague took the opportunity of the reconstruction to create a brand new boulevard with a panoramic view over the sea from different levels. De Solà-Morales designed the new boulevard following the original undulating course of the dunes and merges naturally into its surroundings.
It’s different height levels separate cars, bicycles and pedestrians as much as possible, creating a relaxing and safe environment in which to take a stroll or bicycle ride with a wonderful view over the sea.
Wide steps all along the boulevard provide easy access to the different levels. Natural stone, paving bricks, bands of green space and shell asphalt provide high quality appeal. Lovely benches and atmospheric lighting give the boulevard its wonderful ambiance in the evening.
Mayor Jozias van Aartsen of The Hague during the opening ceremony.
Construction of the 1 km long underground sea wall.
Water board Hollandse Delta, water technology firm Paques and water research institute STOWA officially started the Cenirelta-project to demonstrate a promising new energy-efficient waste water treatment technology producing a very clean effluent.
The demonstration project is being carried out in the underground municipal treatment plant Dokhaven in Rotterdam (620,000 population equivalents).
The project partners closely cooperate with Delft university of technology and Radboud University Nijmegen.
Cenirelta is financially supported by European Union’s Life+ programme.
Low-temperature waste water
CENIRELTA is the acronym for cost-effective nitrogen removal from waste water by low-temperature Anammox, based on anaerobic treatment of waste water with Anammox bacteria (Anaerobic ammonium oxidation).
Anammox is a proven process at a temperature of 30-35 degrees Celsius and at high nitrogen loads. For this demonstration project the process has been refined to work at low temperatures (10 – 20 oC) and low nitrogen concentrations.
Underground wwtp Dokhaven, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Minimum carbon footprint
The Anammox process is a major breakthrough in nitrogen removal. Compared to conventional nitrifation/denitrification, operational costs are reduced by up to 90% as are CO2 emission levels. This brings the plant’s carbon footprint down to a minimum.
Delft University of Technology has played a leading role in the development of the Anammox process. Paques has patented the process for commercial purposes and already built 11 plants worldwide.
Water technology experts involved in the cold Anammox demo project (from left to right): Andy Schellen (waterschap Hollandse Delta), prof. Mark van Loosdrecht (TU Delft), Jans Kruit (Paques) en Cora Uijterlinde (STOWA).
More information
Waterschap Hollandse Delta
Ridderkerk, the Netherlands
+31 88 974 3096 www.wshd.nl
The Dutch Navy vessel HMS Pelikaan provides the population of the island Saba in the Dutch Caribbean with fresh water .
Saba is struggling with a severe shortage of drinking water after a long period of drought and a defective water factory. Especially government entities, such as schools, hospitals and retirement homes are under threat of running out of water.
Rainwater shortage
The Caribbean island of Saba has a long tradition of rainwater harvesting. Houses on Saba are constructed to support the collection of rainwater. Due to a long period of drought many rainwater cisterns on the island ran dry.
The local drinking water system has a limited production capacity and mainly provides water to the local hospital.
A new drinking water plant to increase the island’s fresh water capacity is under construction.
On board water maker
HMS Pelikaan also brought 60,000 litres of water to Saba in August 2009. In January 2010, the vessel was used to transport water to Haiti after the country was hit by an earthquake.
The water tanks on board the HMS Pelikaan have a capacity of 70,000 litres.
The marine vessel has a Demitec water maker on board with a capacity of 25 m3 per day. The Demitec installation desalinates seawater by reverse osmosis and is delivered by Hatenboer Water.
A Demitec desalination RO-unit
Full water services
Next to the water maker, disinfection equipment and sanitary fresh water system with ultra filtration, Hatenboer-Water provides periodically the water analysis on board the Pelikaan to ensure a safe water system.
About Hatenboer
Hatenboer-Water is active in the field of water treatment. It also supplied water treatment equipment to most vessels from the Royal Dutch Navy and several foreign navies.
The company’s Demitec RO-units are equipped with a seawater intake pump, extensive pre-treatment, high-quality membranes, anti scalant dosing unit, membrane cleaning (CIP) unit and slow running high-pressure plunger pump.
The Dutch applied research institute TNO is developing, in close cooperation water board Hollands Noorderkwartier, STOWA, Vitens and Waternet, the Hydro chip that can analyse dna structures and determine the quality of surface water
The development and demonstration of the Hydro chip takes place within the EU Life + programme. Use of the Hydro chip will manage surface water more efficient compared to the current method.
Pebble algae as indicator
Fast keys of the quality of surface water is therefore important. Pebble algae come in almost all waters off and the presence or absence of these algae is a good indicator of the quality of water.
The current way to investigate water quality is detecting Pebble algae in water samples using a microscope. This is a time-consuming and therefore an expensive job. The Hydro chip in.
Detect DNA
By DNA for various types of algae to detect Hydro can chip easily Pebble, prescribe those categories of siliceous algae are present in the water and translate this to the ecological state of the water.
To the Hydro chip in practical use is still further development needed, because the Hydro chip now can detect only a few groups Pebble algae. By using generic DNA technology can also in the future other relevant Hydro chip algae and bacteria (such as cyanobacteria).
The project Hydro chip takes place within the EU Life + demonstration program
About TNO
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek or TNO (Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research) is a nonprofit organization in the Netherlands that focuses on applied science.
TNO is a knowledge organization for companies, government bodies and public organizations. The approximately 5,400 employees work to develop and apply knowledge. The organization also conducts contract research, offers specialist consulting services, and grants licences for patents and specialist software.
This news item was originally published on the website of TNO.
More information
TNO
Zeist, the Netherlands
+31 88 866 50 97 www.tno.nl
Reporters Josh Robin and Juan Manuel Benitez of the New York news station NY1 travelled to the Netherlands in January to find out how the Dutch defend themselves against flooding.
The news station NY1 published a seven part series of their in-depth report Fighting the tides
In the wake of its devastation, Hurricane Sandy leaves New York with difficult questions about how the city could prevent similar destruction in another storm.
With an eye toward how New York will prepare for the next Sandy, the New York journalists looked at the measures implemented by the Dutch.
Long term planning Watch full interview with professor Malcolm Bowman on NY1: Fighting the tide – part 2.
In part 2 Robin and Benitez interview professor Malcolm Bowman of the State University of New York who advices the New York authorities to start with a serious long term planning on flood risk reduction.
Bowman envisions large multipurpose structures as storm surge barriers systems that function as interstate by-passes and rail links.
In the interview he advises the authorities to visit London (UK), Saint Petersburg (*Russia), Venice (Italy) and Rotterdam (the Netherlands) in order to learn more about storm surge barriers and possible combinations with other flood risk reduction measures such as shortening the coastlines, beach nourishment and construction of sand dunes.
New concepts for flood resilient structures Watch full interview with Deltacommissioner Wim Kuijken on NY1: Fighting the tide – part 6.
In part 6 deltacommissioner Wim Kuijken explains in an interview the new long term flood protection strategy that the Dutch are preparing. He invites US and Dutch experts to jointly develop new concepts for flood-resilient structures.
US authorities are good in evacuation, the Dutch in preparedness, let’s learn from each other, he says. According to Kuijken, the Netherlands is presently exploring the possibilities of combining hard civil engineering preventive measures, such as dikes and barriers, with more soft measures using ecological processes along the coast such as sedimentation, tides and vegetation.
Three layers of flood protection: preparedness, resiliency and evacuation
The Netherlands is in the process of adopting a new flood protection policy, based on three layers. The current layer of prevention with dikes, will be extended with two additional layers: spatial planning and evacuation, Kuijken explains.
Kuijken advocates joint US-Dutch efforts to explore what he calls the second layer of spatial planning and building more flood resiliant cities.
Interesting cultural difference
In part 5 the journalists point out some interesting cultural differences between the Netherlands and the US, explaining why certain solutions stand alone and work in one given country but not necessarily work the same way in another one.
“In the US, people more rely on themselves,” says Aerts, of the University of Amsterdam. “If they have fear, they take out insurance, or they rely on evacuations schemes for example. Here in The Netherlands, we rely more on the government. So there’s a cultural difference.”
The journalists themselves noticed that Dutch officials seemed pained not to point out the obvious: that we New Yorkers are well behind in building these kinds of modern flood-resistant structures.
Three remarkable observations
Quoting three remarkable observations by Josh Robin:
- They (the Duth) tend to accentuate the positive, that Americans are better at organizing large-scale evacuations than the Dutch.
- The cultural difference had my wondering if all of the things we saw in the Netherlands even possible to get done in New York? A parking garage/water overflow tank? A sea barrier spanning New York harbor? A floating neighborhood in the East River?
- As I write this, it’s been about three months since Hurricane Sandy struck, and Congress only just approved emergency relief money that New York long ago requested. Federal officials recently updated the region’s flood maps for the first time in thirty years.
The whole series on internet
Read all seven parts of the series Fighting the tides on the NY1 website:
• Part I: Capelle
• Part II: It Did Happen Here
• Part III: The Levees
• Part IV: The DeltaWorks Plan
• Part V: A Floating Neighborhood in Amsterdam
• Part VI: Oosterscheldekering and Maeslantkering
• Part VII: New York
Drinking water company Vitens has won two international innovation prizes in Madrid.
The Water and Energy Exchange crowned the ‘Champagne rinse’ and the Vitens Innovation Playground with a Global Innovation Award.
Rik Thijssen, Manager Business Development at Vitens is pleased with the prizes: “It’s really fantastic for our researchers and the partners we work with that we have been able to receive this international acknowledgement.”
Real time sensoring in drinking water distribution network
The Vitens Innovation Playground (VIP) in Noardburgum, the Netherlands, won in the infrastructure category.
In this test bed, Vitens conducts research into the possibility of using sensors in the water mains network to measure in real time the quality of and demand for water, and in that way to work towards an intelligent water supply.
The scale of the test bed is unique – nowhere else in the world are new technologies being tested in a 2,000 km mains network.
Rik Thijssen receives the WEX Infrastructure award 2013 from jury member Fiona Griffith of the consultancy firm Isles Utilities.
Cleaning membranes with dissolved CO2
The ‘Champagne rinse’, an innovative and sustainable method of cleaning membranes using CO2 dissolved in water, won in the process technology category.
The innovation is of great importance internationally because membrane filtration is needed for making drinking water from river or seawater.
Vitens and WE consult are co-holder of the patent on this new purification technology.
About Vitens
Vitens invests continuously in sustainability and innovation in order to be able to continue to guarantee an optimal and reliable supply of drinking water in future. Vitens was nominated for no less than four times for a WEX Global Innovation Award.
Vitens is the largest drinking water company in the Netherlands. With 1,700 employees, 100 production plants and a mains network of 47,500 kilometres, it delivers 350 million m3 of water per year to 5.4 million people.
The annual turnover is 450 million euro. The shares in Vitens are 100% held by local and regional governments. The drinking water price per litre is 0.0013 euro.
This news item was originally published on the website of Vitens Solutions
More information
Vitens Solutions
Utrecht, the Netherlands
+31 88 884 55 01 www.vitens.nl
W-E-X Global
p/a WEX Events Limited
London, UK
+44 (0) 207 403 2773 www.w-e-x.com
For more information about sustainability and innovation at Vitens, go to: www.vitens.nl/overvitens/water/paginas/duurzaamheid_innovatie.aspx
For more information about WEX, The Water and Energy Exchange, go to:
www.w-e-x.com
Fugro and CGG announce the closure of the previously announced Seabed Geosolutions joint venture on 15 February 2013. The joint venture is operational with immediate effect.
The closure completes the process of incorporation of the ocean bottom node businesses from Fugro and CGG, and the CGG transition zone, ocean bottom cable and permanent reservoir monitoring activities in a joint venture.
Fugro majority stake
In addition to the contribution of relevant activities from both parents, Fugro has contributed EURO 225 million in cash to CGG with respect to the Seabed Geosolutions joint venture in which Fugro takes a 60% stake.
The joint venture is expected to realize a sales volume of over 400 million euro in its first operational year.
Earlier agreement
Fugro and CGG came to an agreement on January 28 for CGG to acquire Fugro’s Geoscience Division. At the same time both companies agreed to create Seabed Geosolutions.
Additionally CGG got a selling license for Fugro’s existing 3D data, which remains owned by Fugro.
Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) deploys nodes on the bottom of the ocean for the collection of geological data.
About Fugro
Fugro was founded by two enterprising Dutch engineers in the early 1960s. Today the company collects and interprets data relating to the earth’s surface and sub-surface and for associated services and advice in support of infrastructure development on land, along the coast and on the seabed.
With projects around the world and approximately 13,500 employees, it is one of the world’s largest engineering firms.
About CGGCGG is a fully integrated Geoscience company providing leading geological, geophysical and reservoir capabilities to its broad base of customers primarily from the global oil and gas industry.
Through its three complementary business divisions of Equipment, Acquisition and Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir (GGR), CGG brings value across all aspects of natural resource exploration and exploitation. CGG has 10,000 employees working in 70 locations worldwide.
This news item was originally published on the websites of Fugro and CGG.
More information
Fugro
Leidschendam, the Netherlands
+31 70 311 1422 www.fugro.com
The Netherlands is host country for the international celebration of World Water Day (WWD) on 22 March 2013. The event this year highlights water cooperation, in keeping with 2013 being the UN International Year of Water Cooperation.
On World Water Day, high-level representatives of the United Nations, civil society organisations, government and business will come to The Hague to underline and discuss the importance of water cooperation for peace and sustainable development.
WWD is organised by UNESCO (on behalf of UN Water), the Dutch government and other organisations from the Netherlands and abroad.
Wednesday 20 March: Walking for water
Each year, in the margins of World Water Day, Dutch non-governmental organisations Aqua for All, Simavi, AMREF, ZOA and Akvo, organise the fundraising event Walking for Water.
Over 25.000 primary school children walk six kilometres carrying backpacks containing six litres of water, to experience what it is like to carry water over long distances –as many of their peers in other parts of the world do daily.
This year the Dutch ngo’s will emphasize on promoting the walkathon among children around the world. Schools from Luxembourg, Hungary and England have already announced their participation.
Thursday 21 March: multi-stakeholder dialogue
Preluding the celebration is a multi-stakeholder dialogue on 22 March, named ‘Wings for water’. Leaders from governments, UN, businesses, civil societies, and faith-based and youth organisations, will debate the issues of ‘water, equity and sustainable development’ and ‘water and inclusive finance’.
These roundtable discussions will result in a wake-up call for water.
Friday 22 March: high level forum
Keynote speeches by leaders from the international water community will start the high level forum on water cooperation, followed four thematic (break-out) sessions.
The four themes of the se sessions are:
• Water cooperation is key to poverty eradication, social equity and gender equality.
• Water cooperation creates economic benefits.
• Water cooperation helps preserve water resources and protects the environment.
• Water cooperation builds peace.
Talks on new post-2015 water targets
Additionally talks will take place on the post-2015 water targets. The United Nations are working on a proposal for new global water and sanitation targets, following the deadline of the current Millennium Development Goal for water.
Worldwide consultations
On WWD the outcomes will be presented of the global UN consultation ‘The World We Want’. Last year the UN started a website for all global citizens to build a collective vision on a new development agenda. The websites gives everybody the opportunity to give ideas and express aspirations on 11 theme’s, including water.
For the special occasion of the WWD celebration the Dutch-based platform on globalization and development, The Broker, started an online consultation on the
Post-2015 development agenda amongst its network of international experts amongst governments, international institutions, NGOs, multinationals and universities.
The results of these consultations will be used as input for the stakeholder dialogue and the high level forum.
Paramount importance of groundwater
At the outset of the celebration of WWD2013, UNESCO will organize the 5th Regional Consultation on Groundwater Governance in The Hague from 19 to 21 March 2013.
This project is to raise awareness for the paramount importance of groundwater resources and their sustainable management in averting the impending water crisis.
