Funding body: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

The CWS is an internationally leading group specialising in the planning, design, operation and rehabilitation of urban water systems. It has been awarded two consecutive Platform Grants that in EPSRC’s words ‘provide world-leading academic groups with continuation of funding’. Professor Butler, who held two platform grants in his own right at Imperial College (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering), moved to Exeter as an 'Anniversary Chair' in January 2006 and further strengthens this world-leading activity.

Mitigation of Water Stress through new Approaches to Integrating Management, Technical, Economic and Institutional Instruments

Funding body: European Commission (Framework 6)

AquaStress is a four year (2005-2009) Integrated Project (IP) funded by the European Commission in the frame of the 6th R&D Framework Programme, with contributions from 35 renowned organizations, including SMEs, from 17 countries.

Water stress is a global problem with far-reaching economic and social implications. The mitigation of water stress at regional scale depends not just on technological innovations, but also on the development of new integrated water management tools and decision-making practices. The AquaStress IP delivers enhanced interdisciplinary methodologies enabling actors at different levels of involvement and at different stages of the planning process to mitigate water stress problems. The IP draws on both academic and practitioner skills to generate knowledge in technological, operational management, policy, socio-economic, and environmental domains.

Funding body: European Commission (Framework 6)

The central tenet of the NeWater project is a transition from currently prevailing regimes of river basin water management into more adaptive regimes in the future. This transition calls for a highly integrated water resources management concept. NeWater identifies key typical elements of the current water management system and focuses its research on processes of transition of these elements to adaptive IWRM.

AQUATOR® is a commercial software for developing and running simulation models of natural rivers, water resources and water supply systems, using different operational rules, constraints and priorities. Developed by Oxford Scientific Software, it is being used by several water companies in the UK. The Centre for Water Systems has undertaken the task of linking AQUATOR to a Multiobjective Genetic Algorithms optimisation module.