SIWW2014: Dutch water tech took centre stage at Singapore water week
Over 25 Dutch companies and organisations participated in this year's edition of the Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) that took place from 1 - 5 June.
Centre piece of the Dutch presence was the Netherlands Water Pavilion that featured 13 prominent Dutch organisations.
Largest edition
Dutch water experts participated in numerous high-level forums and workshops and shared their views with experts, practitioners, and academia to identify solutions to cross cutting global water challenges.
Several gave a presentation at the 40 Water Convention technical sessions across five themes covering the entire water value chain.
The 2014-edition of SIWW attracted over 20.000 participants from 118 countries. The exhibition was the largest edition to date with more than 800 exhibitors and 24 group pavilions.
Well attended welcome reception
Lennart Silvis, director of the Netherlands Water Partnerships kicked off the well-attended welcome reception in the Netherlands Water Pavilion on June 3.
Arno Kops (middle) of consultancy firm Witteveen+bos pressed the red button to mark the official opening of a new office by his firm in Singapore. Kops was joined by Khoo Teng Chye (right) of Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore and Ahmed Aboutaleb (left), mayor of Rotterdam city.
Programme Director International Research Theo van den Hoven (right) of KWR signed an agreement with R&D director Harry Seah (left) of PUB Singapore to collaborate in the Watershare programme to share software specially developed to solve water problems faced by end-users of knowledge institutes.
On stage
Dutch environmental minister Melanie Schultz-Van Haegen was one of the five water ministers to participate in the plenary opening on June 2. She urged all delta cities in the world to take joint action now and no longer wait for water-related disasters to happen.
Professor Mark van Loosdrecht of the Delft University of Technology chaired the hot-issue workshop on nitrogen removal from waste water by using anammox bacteria. Experts shared the results from pilot programmes on deammonification in the mainstream at wwtp Dokhaven (the Netherlands), wwtp Changi (Singapore), wwtp Blue Plains (USA) and wwtp Strass (Germany). The workshop revealed that it is very complicated to maintain the right process conditions for the Anammox bacteria to do their job.
Director Martien den Blanken (second right) of the Dutch water supply company PWN Noord-Holland was the first in a high level Water Leaders Dialogue to give his view on improving water utilities. The dialogue concentrated on full cost recovery on water supply. Conclusion: this is only possible when the water utilities succeed to communicate the value of their services to politicians and citizens.
Director Cees Buisman (left) of water technology centre Wetsus lead a forum debate on innovation and financing. He challenged his panel members with the idea of disruptive research, as is done in his centre in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. However, it proved his panel was more interested in return-on-investment. Innovative water technology is fine, but in the end investors simply want their money back.
Marten Hillen is one of the top experts on flood management for the consultancy firm Royal HaskoningDHV and moved to Singapore a few months ago. In his contribution to the Water Convention he compared the flood management in Bangkok, New York, New Orleans and Rotterdam. The first two cities only talk about taking measures. New Orleans took measures. But only after a flood disaster happened. Hillen classified Rotterdam as a 'water sensitive' city that did not wait for water-related disasters to happen and is constantly upgrading its flood protection and drainage system.
Ronald van 't Oever (left) of Pentair/X-Flow participated in the poster presentations with two membrane novelties. Here he explains the full removal of high oil concentrations from water streams in oil fields, to his fellow countryman Tim Hendrickx (right) of Paques.
Bendert de Graaf of Vitens Solutions shared the preliminary results of a real time monitoring project of a drinking water distribution system in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. For this project 45 EventLab sensors are used, developed by the Dutch-Singapore company Optiqua. De Graaf told of two incidents that were immediately detected. One was a major pipe burst and the other a malfunction of the water softening process. In both cases the real-time EventLab sensors measured a sudden change of water quality and alarmed the operator in the control room who could take subsequent action.
Hans Wouters (in the back, left) of BlueLeg Monitor drew the attention of PUB Singapore for his Water Insight Spectrometer (WISP). The hand-held device measures the water quality on algae bloom. Wouters took a delegation to the nearby Marina Barrage and demonstrated how quickly the quality of the surface water in the Marina Bay could be determined.
And as always, there is the inevitable Dutch cheese cubes at the welcome reception in the Netherlands Water Pavilion.....
The next edition of Singapore International Water Week will take place on 10 – 14 July 2016 and will again be co-located with the World Cities Summit and the CleanEnviro Summit.
Also read on this website
• SIWW2014: Kick-off 3rd Singapore-Netherlands Water Challenge at Dutch pavilion, 6 June 2014
• SIWW2014: PWN Technologies launches compact series CeraMac membranes at water week, 4 June 2014
• SIWW2014: Consultancy firm Witteveen+Bos launches Singapore office during water week, 4 June 2014
• SIWW2014: PUB Singapore joins Watershare knowledge platform as Gold Member, 3 June 2014
• SIWW2014: Dutch minister Schultz calls for action on mitigation water-related disasters, 2 June 2014
• SIWW2014: Meet the Dutch water sector at Singapore International Water Week
More information
Netherlands Water Partnership
The Hague, the Netherlands
+31 70 304 3700
www.nwp.nl
Water Alliance
Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
+31 58 2849044
www.wateralliance.nl