Projects

IWRA Projects

IWRA projects help address key water challenges and priorities in both developing and developed countries for the sustainable management of this resource and the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. Current projects include: Smart Water Management, Water Quality and the Science & Policy Interface. IWRA Task Forces provide guidance to these projects through their global networks of experts.

Smart Water Management (SWM)

IWRA has led two large projects to better understand and promote the benefits of SWM: The Smart Water Management (SWM) Case Study project, and the Smart Water Cities Project. The Smart Water Management Case study project run from 2017 to 2018 and aimed to promote the continued implementation of SWM by sharing the knowledge and insights gained by exemplary SWM projects from around the world. Following on from the successful delivery of the SWM case study report, IWRA, K-water and the Asian Water Council (AWC) agreed to initiate a new phase of collaboration from 2020 to December 2023 with the Smart Water Cities project. This project aims to identify and to examine examples of smart water technologies in cities around the world, and to collect and to analyse a series of global standards frameworks and certification schemes applicable to smart and sustainable cities.

Water Quality

With a long history of projects focusing on the quality of water resources, IWRA has vast expertise in this subject, partnering with major international water institutions and organisations. As a key thematic area of its Strategic Priorities & Actions for 2016-2018, IWRA has set a programme of work including the publication of its report on “Developing a Global Compendium on Water Quality Guidelines for Different Uses”, as well as to promote the smarter use of water through the provision of expert networks and tools.

Water Security

IWRA recognizes ongoing global water security issues as a major challenge, and addresses them in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals in close collaboration with international organisations and key partners. With a new dedicated task force, this project will focus to document relevant research on water security issues together with UNESCO and i-WSSM Centrer, which annually co-publish the Global Water Security Issues (GWSI) Paper Series. IWRA and its task force are assisting with the GWSI Paper Series publication.

Science-Policy Interface (SPI)

SPI lies at the heart of much of the work that IWRA does. IWRA promotes effective SPI to build and sustain robust institutions and networks, encouraging and supporting communication between researchers and policymakers. To this end, IWRA has worked together with the Office International de l’Eau (OIEau) conducting mapping exercises to better understand the current institutional SPI landscape in the climate change and water sectors, organised its successful XVI World Water Congress on “Bridging Science and Policy” and is working to create a dedicated centralised SPI networking platform.

More information on this project available, shortly.