Chair Water Quality and Sustainable Water Systems

Chair Water Quality and Sustainable Water Systems

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Welcome to the website of the ‘Water Quality and Sustainable Water Systems’ research group at Utrecht University

The mission of our chair ‘Water Quality and Sustainable Water Systems’ is:

To contribute to an improved understanding of the state, drivers and adaptive solutions of clean water provision and water system challenges under changing climate and extremes, and socio-economic developments. Here account for the interactions between water (both quantity and quality) with different nexus actors, particularly energy, food, domestic use and ecosystems.

A key question at the centre of this chair’s mission is:
How can we secure sufficient water of suitable quality as a resource for both humans and nature – at present and for future generations?

To address this challenge, the chair contributes to the following four themes, which are deeply embedded in our research, our teaching and in various impact-driven activities through which we share new scientific insights in an accessible way with policymakers and the general public.

This chair contributes to the development of:

Models & tools

Development of process-based models, tools, and data-driven water quality assessment frameworks to monitor and predict water quality hotspots and bright spots and estimate water quality trends and contributing drivers at local to global scales. 

Multi-risk assessment frameworks

Design of new multi-risk water quality assessment frameworks, considering multiple pollutants, multiple sectoral risks, and multiple hazards (e.g., droughts, heatwaves, compound events).

New concepts & indicators

Development of novel concepts and indicators for quantifying water system challenges driven by both water quantity and quality issues, such as water scarcity and water-related risks for various sectors and functions.

Coupled model frameworks to estimate complex interactions and cascading impacts in the water-food-energy-ecosystem nexus

Coupled model frameworks for improved understanding and quantification of complex interactions between water systems (quality and quantity) and energy, food, and ecosystems (nexus actors) under short-term shocks (e.g., extreme weather events) and multi-decadal global change developments.

Current topics

Rivers
Water quality
Water scarcity
Desalination
Wastewater treatment and reuse
Hydropower & thermoelectric power
Crop irrigation
Freshwater ecosystems
Drinking water
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