32 world-wide water partners to bring the City of the Future one step closer
Updated - Tuesday 18 April 2006
The City of the Future
SWITCH (Sustainable Water management Improves Tomorrow’s Cities’ Health) aims at the development, application and demonstration of a range of tested scientific, technological and socio-economic solutions that contribute to the achievement of sustainable and effective urban water management schemes in ‘The City of the future’ (projection 30-50 years from now).
IRC was instrumental in developing the project idea and invited UNESCO-IHE to take the lead.The project is a partnership between the European Union and a consortium of 32 world wide partners (see list of partners below). The project will run for five years. It has a budget of 22 million Euros, mainly funded by the European Union within its efforts to promote efficient water use and integrated water management to address water-related Global Change pressures. These pressures include population growth, urbanisation and climate-change.
Launch
The project was presented at the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City. The kick-off meeting in the presence of of all 32 partners is happening in Delft from 18-21 April 2006.
Challenges
The project will develop scientific, technological and socio-economic solutions that contribute to effective urban water management schemes. It deals with challenges related to the quantity and quality of water, ineffective sanitation systems, poor governance and costly water management. The implementation of the results of SWITCH are expected to shape the City of the Future by 2050. The director of UNESCO-IHE, Richard Meganck says: “The City of the Future depends on the success of this project”’.
Using a very innovative approach, SWITCH is designed to cover all elements of the urban water cycle, from water demand management, to storm water management, waste prevention, treatment and reuse, governance and asset management, to river rehabilitation and eco-hydrology.
Three activities, nine demonstration cities
It will integrate three activities: Research, Training and Demonstration, carried out by all partners. Learning Alliances will be set up to ensure smooth exchange of knowledge and experiences between these activity clusters, and between the Demonstration cities. SWITCH will engage in semi-full scale testing of new solutions in nine Demonstration cities: Accra (Ghana), Alexandria (Egypt), Belo Horizonte (Brazil). Beijing (China), Birmingham (UK), Hamburg (Germany), Lodz (Poland), Saragossa (Spain) and Tel Aviv (Israel).
List of partners
| UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Netherlands IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, Netherlands ETC International Group, Netherlands Wageningen University and Research Center, Netherlands Middlesex University, UK University of Birmingham, UK Ove Arup and Partners, UK University of Greenwich - NRI, UK Loughborough University, UK University of Abertay Dundee, UK Mekorot Israel National Water Co., Israel Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Chongqing University, China P.R. University of Birmingham, UK Municipality of Zaragoza, Spain University of Lodz, Poland International Water Management Institute, Ghana Kwame Nkrumah University, Ghana Municipality of Belo Horizonte, Brazil Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland National Technical University of Athens, Greece Universidad del Valle, Colombia Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia IPES - Promocion del Desarrollo Sostenible, Peru Ingenieurgesellschaft Prof. Dr. Sieker,Germany Hamburg State Ministry, Germany Technische Universität Berlin, Germany ICLEI - European Secretariat,Germany Technische Universität Hamburg- Harburg, Germany House of Water and Environment, Palestine Centre for Env & Dev for the Arab Region & EU, Egypt |
Contact
| SWITCH secretariat Telephone: +31 15 2151771 e-mail: switch@unesco-ihe.org |
