Finding and promoting talents

Hennef. The best students of water management come from Austria. The team of the Technical University of Vienna took first place at the second World University Challenge hosted by the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA) in Munich. Teams from the Dokuz Eylul University Izmir (Turkey) and the University of Kassel were able to secure silver and bronze.

The competition for young academics aims to promote upcoming engineers in the field of water engineering and, at the same time, to draw the attention of companies to qualified and motivated newcomers. “For many companies, competitions are a tool for personnel selection”, explained Rüdiger Heidebrecht, Head of the Department Training and International Cooperation at the DWA and initiator of the competition. They show whether talented young people are capable of mastering management requirements, the DWA’s training expert went on to explain.

Strategies for the sustainable use of the resource water

The students from Vienna asserted themselves against a total of 14 teams from Germany and abroad. They showed their skills in four disciplines:

1. Integrated water resource management (IWRM) I. With the aid of the simulation game Aqua Republica from the company DHI, the correlation between water use, social and economic development and ecological sustainability had to be simulated and processed.

2. Integrated water resource management (IWRM) II. A landscape had to be developed using the DWA environmental maps. Infrastructure measures from the water, waste and energy industries had to be combined.

3. Measuring, controlling, regulating. The control and measuring in drains and sewage treatment plants had to be shown on the basis of a model from the company Festo.

4. Virtual reality. With the aid of VR glasses, errors in a virtual treatment plant had to be detected and named.

The World University Challenge was held during the industrial fair IFAT from 14 to 18 Mai 2018 in Munich.