FROM RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE

As a non-profit research institute at the University of Excellence RWTH Aachen, our goal is to develop sustainable, innovative strategies and processes for the future. With our interdisciplinary team, we are promoting important progress for a continuous improvement of the water cycle and for resource-saving solutions in the environmental sector. As our work is recognised as scientifically independent, objective and with high expertise, the FiW often acts as a project developer and coordinator for the majority of Research & Development projects concerning process development using a large project network.

Our research and development activities in process development are characterised by a high relevance to practice: from preliminary laboratory tests to semi-technical implementation, we dedicate all our efforts to innovative questions in our scientific fields. Together with numerous research partners from research and practice, we develop application-oriented solutions while maintaining economic efficiency.

In the process of the digitalising of water management, large fields for development are emerging. These are driven by the possibilities of decentralised data acquisition, transfer and networking of large amounts of data, automated analysis and visualisation, simulation and optimisation of scenarios. In this way, the use of data in almost real time gets possible and helps in decision-making and control processes.

One of the main challenges of the future is to create a network within the water management sector and a sustainable design of central and decentralised supply and disposal infrastructure, integrated water management and the networking and control of decentralised plants. This requires the collection of digital data and the transformation from offline to online systems. The digitalisation of water management can only be successful if the existing information can be linked and processed directly.

Research work at the interface of urban and river basin management and the exchange of partners and customers from the water industry regularly point to challenges in the management and protection of water bodies and the environment. Plastics in running waters or water-sensitive urban development are complex issues and require complex solutions. Here, technological innovations are not sufficient to reduce pollution. Therefore, the FiW and its team of experts are working on the development of sustainable concepts for efficient water management. We present a selection of concepts that have been developed nationally and internationally by the FiW in close cooperation with partners and clients.

For many years, the FiW has been working on dialogue-orientated approaches to reach an agreement between different groups of stakeholders. In this context, sustainable solutions have been developed for example for water use conflicts, caused by climate change, for the increase of renewable energies in the context of land use competition and, last but not least, for the development of a new urban climate model where future municipal users from environmental and planning departments are involved.

For example, in the context of the current nitrate problem, the foundation stone for a dialogue process was laid in a preliminary study in the district of Viersen with the support of GLS Treuhand and together with ahu GmbH. The question was: how and under which framework conditions a consensus can be reached for the implementation of a regionally anchored and environmentally friendly and resource-conserving agriculture. All stakeholders from agriculture, local politics, water management, but also from agricultural trade, wholesale, retail and consumer associations should be involved.