Ensuring Water Security in the Face of Climate Change
RWTH Aachen University and TU Dresden, in collaboration with RWTH's strategic partner, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras IIT (Chennai, India), the Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok, Thailand), and the Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources of the United Nations University in Dresden are set to establish a "Global Water and Climate Adaptation Centre" at IIT Madras.
The Centre will address the question of how society can adapt to the impact that climate change has on water resources. Professor Holger Schüttrumpf, Director of the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management at RWTH, his Dresden colleague Professor Jürgen Stamm, and their partners in India and Thailand are focusing on megacities in Asia. Chennai and Bangkok will serve as living labs, that is, large experimental laboratories where issues of water safety and quality in everyday life are being researched. The Centrer also plans to offer a joint Master's program on "Water Security and Global Change" and a doctoral program.
The Centre is supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the German Federal Foreign Office, which are dedicated to setting up Global Centers for the promotion of interdisciplinary networking between science, politics, business, and civil society.
The "Global Water and Climate Adaptation Centre (ABCD)" is set to receive funding in the amount of 2.8 million euros until December 2025, with a possible extension for another five years. The researchers will collaborate in interdisciplinary teams in three thematic clusters, "Water Security, Water Resource Management, Safe Water Supply and Water Treatment," "Ecosystem Resilience and Nature-Based Adaptation Measures," and "Traditional Knowledge, Local Economies and Societal Acceptance."
In a new program, the DAAD is funding eight interdisciplinary Global Centres, four of which will be dedicated to climate and the environment, the other four to health and pandemic prevention. The Federal Foreign Office will provide around 22 million euros to set up these centres until 2025.