University of Twente students Kees van Ginkel (water quality in Indonesia) and Anouk Bomers (dyke erosion) are the winners of the 2016 Water Network Thesis Award.
Both awards were presented on Friday 25 November, during the Royal Netherlands Water Network’s (KNW) Autumn Conference, in Amsterdam. The winners received a cash prize of 1,000 euros, and the opportunity to publish their work in the prestigious journal H2O.
Water sector
During the conference, prizes were awarded for both the best Bachelor’s thesis and the best Master’s thesis. This year there were twenty entries from a dozen different educational programmes, on an extremely diverse range of topics. The theses were judged on their level of innovation, usability and accessibility, by a jury chaired by Jelle Roorda (Limburg Water Board). The other members of the jury were from Deltares, the Watercycle Research Institute, (KWR), PAO Delft and Wateropleidingen, so all the major disciplines in the water sector were represented.
Water quality in Indonesia
Kees van Ginkel, a Master's student in Civil Engineering at the University of Twente, won out over the other two nominees. His winning thesis is entitled ‘Water quality in the Bandung Basin - Towards a better understanding of the water quality in the Upper Citarum River Basin’.
Kees van Ginkel travelled to a river in Indonesia, investigated its water quality and set out with the local people to identify the sources of water pollution.
Typical Dutch dyke
Anouk Bomers, a former Civil Engineering student who is currently working on a PhD, won out over the other two nominees (from the Delft University of Technology and the Eindhoven University of Technology). Her winning thesis is entitled ‘Road impact on erosion development during overtopping flood events’. In the middle of a storm, Anouk stood on a road running along the top of a typical Dutch dyke, and checked to see whether sections of the dyke were being washed away when it was overtopped by water. The model she developed provides insights into this type of erosion.
