The best three: Indonesia, Iran and Stuttgart

Hennef. 18 teams from Germany and abroad took part in the first ever World University Challenge which was held by the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA). The best young engineers come from Indonesia, Iran and the University of Stuttgart. In three disciplines, they had to demonstrate their skills in the development of strategies for the sustainable use of the resource water:

1. a      Water management. With the aid of a computer simulation game, the relationship between water use, social and economic development and environmental sustainability had to be simulated and processed.

1. b      Assessment. Kill that Rat was a task in which an innovation, a new bait protection box, had to be assessed. The possible applications in Germany and a further country had to be evaluated.

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

3.         Measuring-controlling-regulating. Control and measurement in drains and wastewater treatment plants had to be demonstrated on the basis of a model.

The World University Challenge is a competition that takes place at all locations of the environmental trade fair IFAT. In 2015 the university championship was held in Shanghai (China) and Mumbai (India), in the coming year Johannesburg (South Africa) and Ankara (Turkey) will be added as venues. The winning teams from abroad then compete against participants from the German speaking and European area in the World University Challenge at the next German IFAT. This was the case in Munich at the beginning of June.

With the university competition the DWA aims to encourage young talent and make companies aware of qualified junior employees.