PREPARED conference: Adaptive solutions for water utilities

Demonstrating practical approaches to climate change in the urban area

PREPARED and Aarhus Water are pleased to announce that a conference on adaptive solutions for water utilities will be held in Aarhus, Denmark, January 21-23, 2014.

The conference is a three day technical event for water utilities, city authorities, researchers and consultants with an interest in how water utilities are working with practical solutions in order to adapt to climate change on a short, middle and long term time scale.

PREPARED partners - including 14 water utilities - and invited speakers are presenting their latest research and experiences. Conference tracks are focusing on solutions for operation and planning of wastewater and drinking water systems, Water Cycle Safety Plans, handling of Climate Change Scenarios and other key areas within PREPARED.

The third day of the conference is including the Cities Alliance Forum where water utilities are sharing their experience in solution specific sessions, which will evaluate the solution applied in utilities within and outside PREPARED.

During the 3 days, solutions are presented on posters and videos and the teams – utilities, research partners and technology providers - are available for in depth discussions.

As part of the conference, the project ‘PREPARED Enabling change’ is a research and demonstration task from the WSSTP (Water Supply and Sanitation Technology Platform) thematic working Group Sustainable Water Management in Urban areas, funded by the European Commission.

PREPARED involves 12 European cities, one of them is Lisbon and 2 non-European cities, one from Australia and other from United States. This project started on February 2010 and it is expected to end on January 2014.

Potential effects of climate dynamics on the urban water cycle can involve the aggravation of existing conditions as well as occurrence of new hazards or risk factors. The challenges created by climate changes require an integrated approach by the different stakeholders involved in urban water cycle for dealing with existing and expected new levels of risk.

The proposed Water Cycle Safe Plan framework from Lisbon is applied to Alcântara water catchment, corresponding to roughly half of the city area. The coordinator is the LNEC (Civil Engineering National Laboratory) and involves the Municipality of Lisbon, Civil Protection Department and several other partners. The purpose is to assist the water utilities, manage climate changes and related risks, covering the whole water cycle in an integrated approach.

Lisbon and other cities involved project will be more prepared and resilient to the impact of climate changes in the short and long-term.