1st IAHR International Conference on Global Water Security Organized in Changzhou, China
On October 30, 2023, the 1st IAHR International Conference on Global Water Security, also the 4th International Forum on Water Security and Sustainability, was officially opened at the new campus of Hohai University in Changzhou, China. The event is jointly hosted by IAHR, Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society (CHES), Hohai University and Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute (NHRI), and co-organized by the Yangtze Institute for Conservation and Development (YICODE), etc.
Hohai University, CHES and NHRI are all IAHR institute members.
Hohai University President Yang Guishan, Mayor of Changzhou Sheng Lei, IAHR Past President Roger Falconer, Director of the Third Bureau of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Gao Zhanjun, CHES President Zhou Xuewen addressed the opening ceremony respectively. YICODE President Zhang Jianyun, also the organizing committee chair, presided over the opening ceremony.
IAHR President Philippe Gourbesville, Past President Roger Falconer, Vice President Mohamed Ghidaoui, Past Chair of the Technical Committee on Hydroinformatics Dragan Savic, Past Chair of the Technical Committee on Groundwater Hydraulics and Management Yu Zhongbo and other top experts made plenary reports.
Philippe Gourbesville pointed out in his talk entitled “Smart Water for Water Security: Challenges & Opportunities” that the current water challenges are to ensure strategic needs and uses, to mitigate natural hazards and promote resilience to reduce impact on populations, and to preserve natural environment and water as key resources. The situation is becoming increasingly complex to ensure the right decision on all subjects, with competition among different uses, need to ensure energy and food nexus, and need for exposure and vulnerability management. He explained how Hydroinformatics can better address water issues and support SDG6, but access to reliable data is the key challenge.
In his opening address, Roger Falconer briefly introduced IAHR to the audience, saying that the IAHR Beijing Office, launched in 2015 during his term as IAHR president, has been a great success. He pointed out the world faces growing challenges in the delivery of sufficient good quality water for all and maintaining good ecological status in our rivers, both surface and ground water, estuaries and coastal basins. The time has come for water to reach center stage and the water footprint to be treated in the same way as the global challenges associated with carbon footprint. We can only hope to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water when richer nations start to improve virtual water in an objective of achieving global sustainable water management. The enormous wealth of the state-of-the-art technical expertise within the water community offers the opportunity to contribute enormously to delivering Sustainable Development Goal 6.
The opening day had 17 plenary reports on topics of river basin governance, water transfer project, smart water, glacier melt, urban flood control, climate change, inland waterways, quantifying approach, water culture, sponge cities, tidal energy, wave-based imaging system, hydrodynamic system and ecohydrology. The second day of parallel sessions, with about 140 talks, were conducted around six topics on 1) integrated river basin management, 2) climate change and risks management, 3) water engineering and smart water conservancy, 4) eco-environmental protection, 5) conservation and high-quality development of the Yangtze River and Yellow River basins, and 6) theory and practice of major infrastructure construction.
This is the first specialty conference organized by IAHR’s Technical Committee on Global Water Security co-chaired by Roger Falconer and Arthur Mynett. Before this conference, IAHR released its special edition of Resource Guide on Global Water Security, a catalog-type collection of IAHR resources around a specific topic.