EWRE Seminar

EWRE - Hydrology group and Imperial College Business School hosted a lunchtime seminar given by Dr Nadja Kunz

On Monday 10^th March, Imperial Colleges’ EWRE (Environmental and Water Resource Engineering) hydrology group and Imperial College Business School hosted a lunchtime seminar given by Dr Nadja Kunz entitled “Coupling human and engineered systems for effective water management”. Dr Kunz is a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, and is also part of the IAHS Panta Rhei working group: “Thirsty future: energy and food impacts on water” chaired by EWREs’ Dr Ana Mijic.

 In her talk, Dr Kunz highlighted the challenges facing industry and society in managing water systems using work from her PhD which focused on a case study mining site in Queensland, Australia. The importance of understanding both the engineered water system and strategic water risk associated with the industry, along with the human system was stressed and how these need to be coupled in order to create a “pathway for integrated water management”. Dr Kunz concluded that interdisciplinary research can greatly improve understanding of water challenges and contribute towards more effective water management, and highlighted the potential overlap between mining and urban systems.