Today we were very honored to have a visit from members of the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements and the National Disaster Management Research Institute. In the morning we had time for a research exchange between our members on the topic of water and drought management.
UT's Climate Center was kind enough to help organize a space for this mini symposium. As both ITC and ET faculties have research on these topics, I had invited from the ITC faculty Prof. Victor Jetten to talk about flooding in Limburg and nature based solutions, and Dr. Bastian van de Bout to talk about flood hazard software. From the ET faculty we had our most recent PhD students Maren Jabs and Christoph Euringer show their projects on water allocation and drought resilience in Twente. You can find more information on research we do at UT on these topics here and here.
From the Korean side, my former colleague from ICHARM in Japan, Sangeun Lee, who is now managing director at KRIHS, and Hyeon Cheol Yoon from the NDMI, showed how drought is now increasing in Korea, even leading to dam depletion, agriculture losses, and high increase in food prices. Current policy measures have to change to resolve these issues.
In the afternoon we had Henk Lansink, a member of waterboard Vechtstromen present about the retention basin between Hengelo and Enschede, called Kristalbad, and after we had an excursion there while it was 30 degrees. We learned how this retention basin helps purify the water coming out of the sewage treatment plant in a natural way, and how the different areas are filled and then drained to the next level to increase oxidation. There were many baby birds nestling in the area, and a few other visitors. Though one day was much to short to learn all we wanted to from each other, I look forward to our future collaborations.
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