News
Resilience to Weather Extremes at UT Climate Event, 5 Nov.
On November 5th 2024 the University of Twente's Climate Centre hosted its first Climate Event. The presentations of the keynotes and a photo gallery of the event can be found on the Climate Event 2024 site. As part of the event, parallel tracks were held including one on Resilience to Weather Extremes organised by the UT's Drought Resilience Working group. Among those presenting were representatives from the region who are on the front line of the challenge: the City of Enschede, Vechtstromen Water Board, Vitens (water supplier), the District of Grafschaft Bentheim together with research institutes contributing to understanding of the challenges and solutions including Osnabrueck University, Deltares, and the University of Twente. Links to presenters slides and photos of the sessions.
THE Drought Resilience Programme
The programme on resilience to drought and water scarcity is supported by an interfaculty working group from the five UT faculties. Its purpose is to mobilise, combine and strengthen the university’s excellence in research, education, capacity building and knowledge valorisation for strengthening resilience to drought and water scarcity in our region and beyond. The focus is on:
- reducing dependence on freshwater;
- improving drought monitoring, prediction and response;
- increasing the availability of water for ecosystems and human activities;
- adapting land use to water availability;
- treating increasingly polluted water sources; and
- enhancing governance for adaptation and transformations.
In the region of Twente, the UT collaborates with regional stakeholders (among others Vechtstromen Water Board, Vitens drinking water company, the Municipalities of Enschede, Hengelo and Zwolle, and Saxion Univ. of Applied Sciences) on addressing these challenges to strengthen regional drought resilience.
The UT also supports drought resilience at the international level in collaboration with numerous partners around the world, particularly in the Global South, which is the focus of the geo-sciences faculty, ITC, in particular through the Centre for Disaster Resilience.
Our inventory of expertise that supports drought resilience reflects the UT’s “high tech - human touch approach“
- “High tech” including the monitoring and modelling of key physical systems (water, water-soil, water-vegetation, water-atmosphere) and the technical solutions to improve the functioning of these systems to make them more drought resilient (high tech)
- “Human touch” including understanding the behaviour and interests of individual actors, multi-actor collaboration, and governance systems and promoting behavioural change, collaboration, governance instruments and business models to improve drought resilience.
The five UT faculties all contribute to addressing aspects of understanding and addressing aspects of resilience to drought and water scarcity:
UT FACULTY | CORE KNOWLEDGE DOMAINS AND EXPERTISE |
Behavioural, Management and Social sciences (BMS) | Governance of drought, social justice, citizen science, behavioral change, transformations. |
Engineering Technology (ET) | Water footprint, water saving irrigation technologies, saltwater intrusion, underground stability, hydrological modelling, integral river management, stakeholder involvement, field labs. |
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) | Sensors (monitoring of hydrological variables, underwater networks, plant sensing techniques) and optimization. |
Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) | Use of satellite observations and sensors to monitor soil moisture, temperature, crop productivity or vegetation greenness; Risk modeling and disaster risk reduction; Business models, decision support for farmers; water governance. |
Science and Technology (TNW) | Water purification through membrane technology and reverse osmosis. |
Campus Facility Management (Service) |
expertise of the five faculties
The Drought Resilience Working Group is represented by members from all five faculties and Strategic Business Development:
