Research projects

The urban and local scale is especially affected by global megatrends such as climate change, demographic change or economic structural changes. Population decline on the one hand and settlement growth (new building projects) on the other hand lead to an ongoing expansion of urban water infrastructure. Furthermore the increase of rainfall extremes and long lasting heat-waves putting strains on the water infrastructure. A major challenge for municipalities’ lies in finding a way to adapt pipeline bounded infrastructure to these ambivalent developments.

Therefore, the main question of the junior research group “Water in the city of the future” is: How can the infrastructure of today be transformed (adapted) to the city of the future? A process of creating resilient and flexible residential areas and water infrastructures is required to ensure a sustainable development of the water supply sector.

The interdisciplinary project aims at connecting three different perspectives:

• Integrative urban planning as an approach to combine residential and infrastructural planning
• Classification of residential areas from an engineering point of view to find technical transition paths
• Economic adaptability of the existing water infrastructure

The common objective of the junior research group is the conception of an integrated monitoring and control system for the water management. The PhD projects of the three junior researchers are associated with one of the three involved disciplines. The aggregation of the research results is ensured by continuous cross-institutional collaboration and dialogue. The city of Iserlohn, being the centre of the common research, will support the project.