Sustainable solutions for emerging economies
IWA’s Water and Development Congress series aims to catalyse transformational change and support transition to new ways of managing water resources and delivering water services. The Congress is explicitly solutions-focused, its performance indicators include the level of effective networking, knowledge exchange and the generation of new ideas shared by the participants.
Participants to the IWA’s Water and Development Congress can expect to leave the conference with new ideas and be inspired to take these back and share them with their colleagues or apply them in their own areas of work.
Themes
Technical and workshop sessions themes are below:
1. Drinking Water Treatment and Supply
- 101 Efficient water treatment
- 102 Off-grid water treatment. Technologies, implementation plans, business models…
- 103 Advance treatment (including nanotechnologies and membranes…)
- 104 Desalination for developing economies (including non seawater)
- 105 Process control in Drinking Water Treatment
- 106 Modelling of treatment processes
- 107 Drinking water quality for human health (policies, regulations…)
- 108 Off-grid solutions for water supply (including reuse)
- 109 Integrated water supply
- 110 Rain water harvesting as a water supply option
- 111 Groundwater management (including replenishement)
- 112 Non revenue water (including water losses)
- 113 Intermittent Water Supply towards 24/7
- 114 Water safety and security plans
2. Fecal sludge and Wastewater treatment for resource recovery
- 201 Process control in Wastewater Treatment Plants
- 202 Emerging contaminants (incl. antibiotic resistance, micropolutants, microplastics…)
- 203 Co-treatment for resource recovery
- 204 cost-effective approaches for pathogens destruction
- 205 Industrial wastewater treatment and reuse. Industrial synergies and fit -for-purpose treatment solutions. (Inc. Mining)
- 206 Water reuse (including direct potable reuse)
- 207 Off-grid toilets and decentralized sanitation technologies
- 208 Fecal sludge management (including pathogen destruction and resource recovery)
- 209 Solids liquid separation for resource recovery
- 210 Urban drainage and sewerege management
- 211 OPEX/CAPEX and economic analysis fecal sludge and wastewater treatment, collection and transportation
- 212 Financial viability of fecal sludge and wastewater utility operation
- 213 Sanitation safety plans
3. City water and fecal sludge utility management and services
- 301 Efficient services and performance assessment
- 302 Corporate governance and human resources management (e.g. capacity building, gender gap, youth, culture…)
- 303 Ensuring financially sustainable management of water utilities; short term vs long term decision making
- 304 Long term decision making coping with uncertainties
- 305 Energy and carbon efficiency
- 306 Smart systems for utility management (including monitoring and digital transformation)
- 307 Infrastructure asset management and planning (incl. finances, benchmarking, blue-green infrastucture)
- 308 Customer relationships and social engagement
- 309 Tariffs, equity, and affordability
- 310 Managing fast growing urban areas (e.g. slum upgrading programmes, centralized vs decentralized systems…)
- 311 Business, financial and investment opportunites in water services and water technologies (e.g. business plans in public utilities, new business models…)
- 312 Business models, financing mechanisms for Resource recovery and reuse as integral options for City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation service models (CWIS)
- 313 Institutional and regulatory frameworks, partnership constellations for sustainable sanitation management
- 314 Behaviour change for new product and services for water and sanitation services.
4. Integrated Water Resource Management
- 401 Integrated solutions for resilience (e.g. stakeholder engagement, nature base solutions in watersheds, Urban resilience & emergency response…)
- 402 Floods prevention and management (including warning systems, stormwater tank, rain water harvesting
- 403 Water scarcity and droughts management (including rainwater harvesting…)
- 404 Urban and peri-urban agriculture (including treatment technologies, fit for purpose treatment solutions, regulations, reuse…)
- 405 Water-energy-food nexus
- 406 Footprinting and virtual water
- 407 Basins scale management (e.g. business models for ensuring quantity/quality upstream,ensuring water security for different users, water quality in receiving water bodies…)
- 408 Good governance and public participation
- 409 Water policies, regulation, and multi stakeholder collaboration (including community base management)
- 410 Climate change and responses from developing countries.
5. Efforts toward SDG Goal 6
- 501 Major challenges to achieving SDG Goal 6
- 502 South-South cooperation: sharing of affordable experiences and technologies
- 503 SDG Goal 6: international cooperation and capacity building (including human resources needs, attracting and retaining talent to workforce, etc)
- 504 SDG Goal 6: success stories and business models
- 505 SDG Goal 6: innovative policies for inclusive sanitation services
Programme Advisory Committee
The quality of the Water Development Congress & Exhibition is ensured by a Programme Advisory Committee formed by leading experts in water and development from around the world.
Members of the 2019 IWA Water and Development Congress & Exhibition Programme Advisory Committee are:
Ashok Natarajan
Tamil Nadu Water Investment Company, India
Bio
Ashok Natarajan has a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a post-graduation in Management and has been involved with Indian electric and water utilities for the past 35 years and specializes in Water Management. As Utility expert he has been involved as Project Director and Technical expert in many water supply projects (24×7) and has worked on areas of integrated management information systems, NRW, metering in many projects in India. He has been previously the CEO of UPL Group heading their Water Management Company and prior to this as MD of Hydro-Comp an International Water Utility consulting company. He has published papers on water management in Indian Water Works Association and International Water Loss conference. He is a regular contributor in IIT Madras workshops on Water Management, Smart cities, De-centralized waste water solutions and also has contributed papers in all workshops of Indian Desalination Association, Indian Trenchless Society.
Ashok Natarajan is the Chairman of CII National committee part on “Building Skills and Capacities towards making Industry Water Secure” and conducted a workshop on Smart cities at Delhi which was widely attended all major smart city vendors around the world . He has been recently appointed as Domain expert in the Central Govt. scheme of Uchhatar Avishkar Yojana. Has been selected as member by CII in “CII Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Panel (2016-17)”.Has been selected as member of the CAB for “WaterEX2017” by Ministry of Water Resources.

Min Yang
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Bio

Rosie Wheen
WaterAid, Australia
Bio

S. Mohan
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India
Bio

Tanuja Ariyananda
Lanka Rain Water Harvesting Forum, Sri Lanka