Kuala Lumpur World Congress News

Every two years our community gathers together at the IAHR World Congress, and in August 2017 around 1200 participants from 61 countries met at the Putra World Trade Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Some 911 full papers were accepted out of 1324 abstracts submitted. The congress covered seven main themes comprising:

• River and Sediment Management

• Flood Management

• Environmental Hydraulics and Industrial Flows

• Coastal, Estuaries and Lakes Management

• Urban Water Management

• Water Resources Management

• Hydroinformatics/Computational Methods and Experimental Methods

Our Congress opened on Monday 14th August by The Honourable Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. There were a total of 12 keynotes during the week involving leading specialists in the hydro environment domain from around the world. Dr Tyler Erickson, Senior Developer Advocate at Google gave a fascinating opening lecture on democratising access to global water information with cloud technologies (see Hydrolink 2, 2017, page 36-37), and the second opening keynote was given by the Minister for Natural Resources and Environment of Malaysia. The Congress closed on the Friday after the Malaysian Deputy Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation gave a highly personal talk about his education, and the differences between public perception of water and the environment and that of scientists.

Around the congress a series of side events took place. Workshops were held on Google Earth Engine, a Master Class on Hydroinformatics and Water Management, a Forum on Practice and Challenges on Integrated Operation of Hydropower Stations and Reservoirs, and Environmental Decision Support for Hydromet cloud based systems. A special Forum on the UN Sustainable Development Goals took place in collaboration with other associations including ICOLD, IWA and WASER. A special meeting for Water Research Institutes was organised on Managing Change.

The congress was organised by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, The National Hydraulics Research Institute of Malaysia (NAHRIM), Department of Irrigation and Drainage Malaysia (DID) and the River Engineering and Urban Drainage Research Centre (REDAC) of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). The congress was sponsored by China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG) (platinum) and the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (platinum), together with DHI (gold) and four silver sponsors including HR Wallingford, ADASFA, TCK SCADA and Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The congress had a uniquely large exhibition with 40 exhibitors present.

A special reception hosted by Taylor and Francis took place on the Tuesday of Congress to celebrate the development of our portfolio of five IAHR Journals. A range of specialist meetings of IAHR technical committees and regional groups (Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa) took place during the congress including a special session on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and a meeting on managing change for the Water Research Institutes which was chaired by Prof. Dr. Shahbaz Khan, head of UNESCO Jakarta.

IAHR News: General Members Assembly

Opening

The IAHR Annual General Members Assembly was chaired by the IAHR President Peter Goodwin during the IAHR congress at the Putra World Trade Centre on Thursday 16th August at 16:00-17:00 with around 60 members present. The minutes of the 2016 General Members Assembly in Colombo, Sri Lanka were circulated to those present and were unanimously approved.

Council Elections

The results of the 2017 Council Elections organised by the 2017 Election Nominating Committee chaired by Prof Bruce Melville were announced. Please find a list of the complete council including the newly-elected members on page 90.

2016 Financial Report

The 2016 financial report was presented by Prof Arthur Mynett, Chair of the Finance Committee. The results, which have been audited by Ernst & Young, show a net surplus for the year of 2,971 Euros which compares with a loss of 78,190 in the previous year.

Although the 2015 loss has been reversed, Prof Mynett expressed the Task Force concern that the reserves of the Association need to be higher, and that efforts should be made by the Association to rebuild them.

The Finance Task Force recommends:

• to continue monitoring of IAHR operations,

• that the budgeting process should be improved,

• efforts should be made to replenish reserves by for example, increasing membership, and more fund-raising.

IAHR is very grateful for the continuing support of Spain Water, both financial and in kind, which is fundamental to our operations in Spain, and for the support of IWHR for our operations in China.

Secretariat Report

Dr George reported the long-term growth trend in membership of IAHR which in mid-2017 has reached a level of 4565, with a strong development of the Young Professional membership to 1933. He also reported that around 20% of our membership at this time is estimated to be female.

During 2017 IAHR for the first time collaborated with a major trade fair (IFEMA – which is the largest trade fair in Spain) to organise the first HydroSenSoft exhibition and conference aimed at showcasing innovation in rapidly evolving sensor technologies for the hydro-environment, and in data analysis and management. This was the first conference of our Experimental Methods and Instrumentation Technical Committee, and a second event has already been confirmed for 26 Feb-1 Mar 2019. Progress in the development of a new internet member management system for the Association was reported. The new system will be platform independent and will include a much improved repository for conference papers, and a special module for conference management available to all IAHR sponsored events.

Publications

IAHR Vice President James Ball, who has council member responsibility for publications, reported on recent special issues of our Hydrolink magazine, and presented news that two of our journals have recently been accepted for indexing in Thomson’s ESCI, and another, JAWER, in Scopus.

The new Journal of Ecohydraulics was success- fully launched during 2016 edited by Christos Katopodis and Rob Kemp, and with the with the invaluable support of IWHR in China.

Prof. Ball also reported on important new IAHR Monographs which have just been published in the T&F IAHR Book Series called “Experimental Hydraulics: Methods, Instrumentation, Data Processing and Management”, and a new Edition of the highly-popular “Fluvial Hydraulics”.

Town Hall Meeting: Futuring IAHR

IAHR President Peter Goodwin reported to the GMA that the Council has established a specific Task Force to look at the future of IAHR. The Council sees a wide range of issues affecting the future viability of our association: Employers expect more return on investments, professionals expect value, there is more competition with for-profit programmes and services, members have less time to participate in meetings and committees, the younger generation has different expectations, to name but a few.

The Task Force invites all Technical Committees, Divisions and all members to share thoughts on these issues, and how IAHR should adapt.

Vice Presidents Arthur Mynett and James Ball kicked off this process by inviting the audience to make suggestions. Ideas and suggestions will be reported in a later issue of Hydrolink.

» Proceedings of the 37th IAHR World Congress (Kuala Lumpur, 2017)