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Special Sessions

Special Sessions
During the congress programme there will be over 23 topics covered during the congress programme. In addition to this, there are various side programmes, special sessions and workshops -available for delegates to attend.
INFORMATION ON SPECIAL SESSIONS
This section of the Website will highlight information on the special sessions available to attend during the maincongress programme. Click on the highlighted sessions below to read further or use the tabs above.
MONDAY 14th May 2012
Prepared Programme – open to all registered delegates *
WaterDiss2.0 – open to all registered delegates
European Green Capital Awards- Overview of this Award lunchtime presentation

TUESDAY 15TH MAY 2012
EU Interreg IVB Special Session- open to all registered delegates
Prepared Programme - open to all registered delegates
 
WEDNESDAY 16TH MAY 2012
Industry Day- hosted by Enterprise Ireland – open to all registered delegates
Prepared Programme – open to all registered delegates
 
THURSDAY 17TH MAY 2012
North West European Session – open to all registered delegates
Prepared Programme – open to all registered delegates

Prepared

 

 

The Prepared Programme will run daily sessions from the Monday to Thursday of the programme. No additional registration fees are required to attend. Some sessions are by invitation only and highlighted below.
Click here to download the Prepared Programmes Full Weekly Schedule at a glance – this can also be found included within the full main programe daily schedules but is simply provided in this one page document for ease of use. Please find further detail on each session below.

MONDAY 14TH MAY

11.30 – 12.50 hour – ALLIANCE FORUM ** (Invitation Only)

The partners from the PREPARED consortium have committed themselves to create a forum for cities / utilities to exchange expertise and gained experience on their demonstration activities but also on other national related research. A first step towards creating this forum was accomplished during the PREPARED Project Steering Board meeting in Berlin, when a dedicated utility session was organised for representatives from the utilities to get to know each other and their specific issues related to climate change.

We would like to invite all utility representatives to participate in this forum in order to exchange experiences on success and difficulties regarding their climate change adaptation efforts and strengthen the network for further collaboration. This session is by invitation only and utilities wanting to attend should contact the Alliance Forum coordinator gesche.gruetzmacher@kompetenz-wasser.de

12.50 – 14.00 – LUNCH

14.00 – 15.00 – AFTERNOON CONGRESS PLENARY

15.10 – 16.30 hour – ALLIANCE FORUM ** (Invitation Only)

The partners from the PREPARED consortium have committed themselves to create a forum for cities / utilities to exchange expertise and gained experience on their demonstration activities but also on other national related research. A first step towards creating this forum was accomplished during the PREPARED Project Steering Board meeting in Berlin, when a dedicated utility session was organised for representatives from the utilities to get to know each other and their specific issues related to climate change.

We would like to invite all utility representatives to participate in this forum in order to exchange experiences on success and difficulties regarding their climate change adaptation efforts and strengthen the network for further collaboration. This session is by invitation only and utilities wanting to attend should contact the Alliance Forum coordinator gesche.gruetzmacher@kompetenz-wasser.de

1630- 16.50 – AFTERNOON BREAK

16.50 – 18.10- Linking research to policy and climate change adaptation strategies in the European Union – OPEN SESSION

Given the necessity to keep global average temperature increase below 2° Celsius com-pared to pre-industrial levels, the European Union (DG CLIMA) develops and implements cost effective international and domestic climate change policies and strategies to meet its targets for 2020 and beyond, especially with regard to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. Its policies also aim at protecting the ozone layer and at ensuring that the climate dimension is appropriately present in all community policies and that adaptation measures will reduce the European Union’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.
One of the tasks is to develop a comprehensive EU adaptation strategy that strengthens Europe’s resilience to climate change. The Commission is actively seeking dialogue and interaction with the research community in order to learn from projects – such as PREPARED – what needs to be changed in EU and subsequently national and regional legislation and regulation to better be able to better adapt to the impacts posed by climate change.

 

18.10 – 1930 – EVENING WELCOME RECEPTION

 

TUESDAY 15TH MAY

11.30 – 12.50 – Enabling Change for adaptation of water supply and sanitation sectors to cope with climate change

This session introduces the FP7 funded project PREPARED- Enabling Change in general. Adaptation of the water sector is an interactive process with the problem owners. The utilities are faced with challenges posed by climate change that have a high level of uncertainty. Within PREPARED a catalogue of tested and demonstrated adaptation measures to be used by water utilities is produced. This catalogue will be introduced. Climate change can lead to extreme flooding and drought events and associated risk.

Water Cycle Safety Planning is a tool being developed within PREPARED that can be used to get a better grip on risks. Quantitative Risk Assessment is a model to be used in water cycle safety planning to better quantify risks. Improved risk assessment through Quantitative Risk Assessment Models will be explained.

 

12.50 – 14.00 – LUNCH

14.00 – 15.00 – AFTERNOON CONGRESS PLENARY

15.10 – 18.00 – WORKSHOP ON SCENARIO PLANNING FOR WATER MANAGEMENT

Urban water systems are dominated by large assets, many of which have design lives of several decades. It is anticipated that many of the impacts of climate change will only become apparent after many years. Therefore, any project which considers how such infrastructure systems are affected by the anticipated impacts of climate change must be able to consider the future in a logical and structured way. There are a number of ways to address issues that may have a significant impact far into the future.

The concept of the PREPARED project developed from a ’roadmapping‘ approach that was used in the Water Supply and Sanitation Technology Platform (www.wsstp.eu). An alternative approach to considering the future is to define the boundaries, within which changes may be expected to occur, then the pressures and impacts these are likely to exert, and from this process, assessing the robustness of any possible responses to the anticipated impacts. Visions of the future may be termed ‘scenarios’ and can be used to represent how things might look at some time in the future, not how we expect them to look. There are many versions of scenarios in use which are not meant to be predictions of the future but simply logically, consistent and plausible visions to test innovations. Various scenarios may be developed for different regions, in different forms for various sectors of services and infrastructure. Hence there is no single scenario or even set of scenarios that can be used exclusively for scenario planning even within a particular sector, country or region.

 

WEDNESDAY 16TH MAY

11.30 – 12.50 – Enabling Change Innovative handling of data and models

This session introduces innovative data and modelling in the FP7-funded project PREPARED- Enabling Change. The following innovative technical issues are addressed in this session:

· Data validation methods: Batch Wise Offline and Continuous On-line

· (Real Time) Data Assimilation methods (including uncertainty issues)

· Computational Fluid Dynamics modelling of Combined Sewer Overflows

Demand modelling in drinking water distribution networks

12.50 – 14.00 – LUNCH

14.00 – 15.00 – AFTERNOON CONGRESS PLENARY

15.10 – 16.30 – WATER CYCLE SAFETY PLAN FRAMEWORK WORKSHOP

The WCSP is a structured approach for integral assessment and management of risks in the urban water cycle involving all stakeholders in the process. It builds on the Water Safety Plan approach that was developed by the World Health Organisation for drinking water. The WCSP has broadened the scope including all aspects of the urban water cycle (wastewater, drainage, drinking water and surface water) and including other risk outcomes (health, environmental and safety). Together stakeholders in the water cycle can identify optimal strategies to address all water related risks.

The WCSP approach is currently demonstrated in several cities with a focus on climate change risks. Progress of this work will be presented, including practical examples. The stakeholders will present a critical view of how the WCSP process is helping them and what is needed. This will lead to the discussion of the panel with the audience. Key points of discussion are:

  •  What do end users\stakeholders want to achieve with the WCSP?
  • What is needed to start a WCSP process in a city?

1630- 16.50 – AFTERNOON BREAK

16.50 – 18.10 – WATER CYCLE SAFETY PLAN TOOLS WORKSHOP

Tools have been and are being developed to support the WCSP process. Databases of risks and risk reduction measures are constructed. These help to identify relevant risks in a systematic way. The mitigation measures are linked to the risks to help the development of an adaptation strategy. Options to study some risks in more detail with Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) methods will be presented. As all WCSP aspects have a strong geographical component, the use of Geographical Information Systems in the WCSP will be illustrated. The following discussion of the panel and the audience will focus on two questions:

  • How can the tools be made attractive for the end users?
  • What type of software tools for implementation of the WCSP do end users want?

 THURSDAY 17TH MAY

 

15.10 – 18.10 - WORKSHOP ON ADAPTATION BY CHANGED OPERATIONS AND PLANNING

Adaptation of the water related infrastructure and operation to cope with the climate change conditions, requires initiatives to increase the technological capacity and performance of the infrastructure. Initiatives include on a short to midterm basis adaptation of the daily operation of the infrastructure, and on a mid to long term basis adaptation of the infrastructure itself.

Daily operation of the infrastructure will have to be able to handle a wider and more rapidly changing input – quantity and quality wise – still having the same/increasing requirements for the output. This requires new integrated real time control strategies and decision support systems possibly combined with construction of new infrastructure components.

Adaptation of the infrastructure itself requires new planning and evaluation tools – not only based on new designs of infrastructure components, but also on completely new concepts for the infrastructure and its management, leading to more resilient water supply and sanitation systems.

 

WaterDiss2.0
WaterDiss2.0

Communicating research: Getting your message across

Monday, 14 May 2012, 09.40 – 12.50

Fee included in the main registration fee.

  

 

What are the appropriate channels for communication to transmit knowledge and ensure uptake in policy and practice? What are common pitfalls and how can these be avoided?

Water researchers, policy makers and practitioners share a common interest in catalyzing the transfer and use of EU-funded water research outputs in order to meet the objectives set out in the Water Framework Directive and related directives. The seminar aims to show the processes of research communication and uptake and present tools and actions allowing you to market your research results. The seminar addresses researchers and scientists from the water-energy-climate nexus with interest in the science-policy-practice interface.

The seminar is organised within the framework of the WaterDiss2.0 FP7 project by experts from Ecologic Institute, an independent think tank for applied environmental research, policy analysis and consultancy. The WaterDiss2.0 project is part of the SPI-Water Cluster, which consists of three EC FP7 projects dealing with science-policy interfacing in water management: STREAM, WaterDiss2.0 and STEP-WISE. These projects are working to support the transfer of water research results to intended users, linking science, policy and practice.

For more information please visit www.waterdiss.eu/iwa-wce

To register for this event, please go to www.waterdiss.eu/iwa-wce/registration

For questions, please contact: johanna.vonderweppen@ecologic.eu

Agenda

 

EU Interreg IVB
EU Interreg IVB Special Session:
FloodResilienCity Project & SIC adapt! Project Cluster.
TUESDAY 15TH May 0940 – 1810
Fee: Included as part of the main registration fee.

EU Interreg IVB Special Session:
FloodResilienCity Project & SIC adapt! Project Cluster.
www.floodresiliencity.eu
www.sic-adapt.eu
09:40 Welcome & Introduction to FRC
Tom Leahy, Dublin City Council Director of the FRC Project.
FRC is an EU Interreg-assisted project consisting of 11 partners representing 8 major european cities and supported by 2 universities.
Themes: > Climate Change; > Room for the River; > Pluvial flooding.
09:50 Broad-Scale Assessment of Urban Flood Risk
Mark G. E. Adamson, Office of Public Works, Ireland.

Outline of processes involved in defining potentially flood-prone areas, susceptibility to & severity of damage leading to a system of Flood Risk Indexing.
10:10 Part1: RIVER CITIES
Chair: Jean-Marie Stam, PM Rijkswaterstaat, Netherlands.
10:20 River Wall Flood Risk Management & Nijmegen Urban Development
Mr. Pim Nijssen, Consultant for the Municipality of Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Giving the River Waal room by relocating the river corridor while also creating a new development with improved urban qualities.    

10:40 German Framework for Flood Risk Management Plans
Heinrich Webler Stadtwerke Mainz AG, Germany/Rheinland-Pfalz
Developing FRM plans covering both structural & non structural activities and achieving community “buy in
“.
11:00 – 11:30 Break
11:30 Orleans Flood Risk Reduction & Response
Marielle Chenesseau, Risk Manager for the Agglomeration Orléans, Val de Loire, France.
Reducing flood risk through greater information to community groups & businesses including free diagnostic service & continuity planning for housing, businesses, and agricultural activities

11:50 Flood Risk Reduction in Urban Paris
Frédéric GACHE, Seine Grands lacs, Paris, France
Urbanisation on the Paris flood plains has exceeded the capacity of the Grand lacs to provide flood risk protection; now being augmented by risk avoidance alleviation & assistance programmes.
12:10 20 Years of Flood Experience in Flanders
Ivo Terrens, Flemish Environment Agency.
How the 4A’s (Alleviation-Avoidance-Awareness-Assistance) supports the traditional dependence on structural measures.

12:30 Question & Answers
12:50 LUNCH
14:00 – 15:00 PLENARY ADDRESS - Main Congress Session
15:00 Part2: URBAN FLOOD RESILIENCE
Chair: John Blanksby, PM University of Sheffield, England.
15:10 Methodolgies & Tools for Flood Risk Assessment.
Damien Serre, Université Paris-Est, EIVP, Paris, France
1. Determination of flood defences performance & resilience. 2. GIS Integrated spatial decision support system.
15:30 The Dublin Pluvial Flooding Study,
Ronnie Falconer & Peter Smyth, Jacobs Engineering Ireland.
Pluvial flood risk mapping & response management strategy for Dublin city.
15:50 Developing Local Flood Risk Management in the City of Bradford
Tony Poole, Principal Engineer Drainage, City of Bradford, England.
How modeling, mapping & GIS was used to compare local & national data sets to develop a local management strategy.
16:10 Question & Answers
16:30 Break
16:50 Part3: SIC adapt! & Adaptation to Climate Change
Chair: Markus Lang, Cluster Manager SIC adapt!
  SIC adapt! is a cluster programme of 100 organsations participating in 8 Interreg IVB projects. It is formulating policies and measures to adapt to the impacts of climate change in 4 linked Action Fields: the 1.Natural; 2. Built; 3.Water & 4.Social Environments.
17:00 SIC adapt! – the cluster’s first results
Markus Lang, Cluster Manager.
The results from pooling the experiences from 100 partner organisations.
17:10 Policy Recommendations
Peter Heiland
First policy recommendations from organisations dealing with the adaptation of the spatial impacts of climate change.
17:25 Discussion
To be advised
17:50 Part4. Special Session Close.
Tom Leahy, Dublin City Council Director of the FRC Project.
  Session Close

Industry Day
Fee: Included as part of the main registration fee.

Industry Day
World Congress on Water, Climate & Energy – The Convention Centre, Dublin
Wednesday 16th May 2012

The Industry Day of the IWA World Congress on Water, Climate and Energy will address questions like “How do we bridge the gap between research and the market?” and “What role does a government play in helping companies to grow and compete?”

The day will feature a selection of keynote speakers from world-leading corporates including Veolia and Ernst & Young during the morning session as well as a number of presentations of innovative technologies from participating Irish companies.

The afternoon session will return to the Congress Plenary for a panel discussion moderated by the IWA and featuring participants from Dublin City Council, Intel, Mainstream Renewable Power, PWN Technologies and PUB Singapore.

Participation at the Industry Day is open to all delegates to the Congress.

09.45  Opening Address

Sean Sherlock  T.D., Minister for Research & Innovation

 

10.00   Enterprise Ireland’s role in building  great companies

Julie Sinnamon, Executive Director

 

10.30   Veolia Innovation Accelerator Programme

Marie-Anne Brodschii, VP Innovation

 

11.00   Break – congress exhibition area

 

11.30   Water, Waste, Energy and Emissions – Turning National Challenges into Global Opportunities
Barry O’Flynn, Director, Sustainability and Cleantech Solutions, Ernst & Young
             

 

12.00   Innovative technologies from Ireland

                4x 15-minute Company case studies from Anua, EPS Group, Datac and Carlow Precast

 

13.00   Networking Lunch

 

14.00   Congress Plenary Panel Session

Featuring Dublin City Council, Intel, Mainstream Renewable Power, PWN & PUB Singapore

 

15.00   Water & Energy Research Themes in Ireland

Wendy McLoone, Science Foundation Ireland

 

ENDS

NW Euro. Session

North West European Session
Thursday 17th May 0950 – 18-00
Fee: Included as part of the main registration fee.
There will be a special session highlighting the specific NW European issues relating to Water, Climate and Energy on Thursday 17th May 2012. This session will address INTERREG, FP7 and other funded policy related instruments including Water Framework Directive, Floods Directive, Energy Directive and Marine Strategy Directive.

Topics will include:

  • Smart cities
  • EE7 Programme
  • Room for the Rivers Programme
  • Isles Energy Project
  • The European Energy Grid
  • Flooding
  • Ecology
  • Marine Strategy & Coastal Waters
  • Harbour Management, International Shipping & Movement of Environmentally Sensitive Hazardous Waste
  • Energy (heat, transportation and electricity) will also be looked at through a NW European focus on production, generation, storage, transmitted and distributed energy from non-renewable and renewable sources.

LUNCHTIME LECTURES

MONDAY 14TH MAY

Overview of the European Green Capital Award

The European Green Capital Award (EGCA) is the result of a European Commission initiative inspired by 15 European cities and the Association of Estonian cities in May 2006 in Tallinn. The aim of the award is to promote urban sustainability and the sharing of best practices between cities.

3 out of 4 European Union citizens live in urban areas – so it is essential that cities are planned and maintained in ways that ensures a sustainable, high quality natural and built environment.
The European Green Capitals are chosen on the basis of their approach to climate change, public transport, green urban areas, sustainable land use, nature, biodiversity, water/wastewater, air quality, noise, waste management, environmental management and energy.

EU Environment Commissioner Janos Potocnik said “If cities are to flourish, city dwellers have to enjoy a clean and healthy urban environment. The European Green Capital Award promotes ideas such as sustainable mobility, modern waste management, sustainable land use, eco-innovation and other green technologies which local authorities can champion. It is our duty to make citizens aware of the need for sustainable urban living and to show them how they too can become part of the drive towards sustainable development and a more resource efficient life”.
RPS Group, Ireland has been appointed as European Green Capital Secretariat by the European Commission to manage and promote awareness of the European Green Capital City award across the 27 Member States.
Read more at: www.europeangreencapital.eu.

TUESDAY 15TH MAY

 

ICT NEXUS

Title: ‘Intelligent Sustainability: ICT’s Potential Contribution’

1310 – 1330

STEPHEN HARPER -Intel Corporation

Stephen Harper is global director of environment and energy policy for Intel Corporation. In that capacity, Stephen has chaired many high tech industry environmental groups and coalitions. He currently serves as chairman of the International Climate Change Partnership. Prior to coming to Intel he directed Amoco Petroleum’s regulatory services group and was a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Env ncy. Prior to the EPA, he was a vice president in the environmental policy consulting firm ICF Consulting.

Stephen has an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and an M.P.A. in public and international affairs from Princeton University.

 

WEDNESDAY 16TH MAY

1300 – 1320

‘Sustainable’ Stormwater Management a key change for Northern Ireland

1325 – 1345

Your free access to European statistics. Geoffroy Fisher – EUROSTAT