26th April 2019, Roorkee- Prof. M L Kansal, Head of the Department of Water resources Development & Management, IIT Roorkee awarded an Indo-Netherland (DST-NWO) Project on Urban Water Systems named as “Water4Change – Integrative and fit-for-purpose water sensitive design framework for fast growing liveable cities”.
The core objective of Water4Change is to provide communities, city, regional and national authorities, NGOs & operators an integrative, fit for purpose and context sensitive design framework for livable fast growing secondary cities in India in a co creative manner.
A NWO-DST Sandpit was organized by DST, Govt. of India as a part of Indo-Netherland Support Program to identify the possible research proposals in the area of Urban Water Systems. About 15 experts each from India and Netherland participated in 4 days program. A budget of 12 crores from DST and equal amount of 1.5 million Euros (12 crores INR) was earmarked for this project with a time duration of 5 years.
Prof. M L Kansal was chosen as the Principal Investigator for one of the 3 possible proposals and framed a consortium of 6 Indian organizations, namely IIT Roorkee; IIT Gandhinagar; MANIT, Bhopal; CEPT, Ahmedabad; Centre for Water Resources Development & Management (CWRDM), Kozhikode (Calicut) and CSIR-CSIO, Chandigarh as well as 6 organizations from Netherland, namely Delft University of Technology, Delft; Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT); University of Twente; IHE Delft Institute for Water Technology; IRC Wash and Deltares
Expressing his joy Prof Kansal said “It’s an honor that our work and ideas have been acknowledged and appreciated at such a big level. We will work our best to achieve the objective of our proposed proposal and can contribute to give our country a proper framework with the help of technology and policy options.”
In the research proposal 4 work packages are suggested involving secondary cities of Shimla, Bhuj and Kozhikode (Calicut). Each of these work packages will be coordinated by one of the coordinator at each of the institute. All the 4 work packages will be further integrated and coordinated by IIT Roorkee.
About IIT Roorkee (https://www.iitr.ac.in/)
IIT Roorkee is an Institute of national importance imparting higher education in engineering, sciences, management, architecture and planning, and humanities and social sciences. Since its establishment in 1847, the Institute has played a vital role in providing technical manpower and know-how to the country. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019, the Institute has been ranked 3rd among the IITs. IIT Roorkee is an institution with pioneering contribution in the field of education, training, research and development, advisory services in various fields including hydrology, water resources, geology, earthquake, renewable energy and environmental management advisory and has world class laboratories related to hydropower and water sector.
IIT Roorkee Website: https://www.iitr.ac.in/