Urban Waters: Resource Or Risk? WWW-YES-2011
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Urban waters: Resource or Risk? WWW-YES-2011 5 - 10 June 2011 Arcueil – France PROCEEDINGS DRAFT VERSION UNIVERSITÉ POPULAIRE DE L’EAU ET DU DEVELOPPEMENT DURABLE Conseil Général du Val-de-Marne Communauté d’Agglomération du Val de Bièvre Université Paris-Est 11th World Wide Workshop for Young Environmental Scientists WWW-YES-2011 Urban waters: resource or risks? Arcueil, France (5 - 10 June 2011) Framework Growing population worldwide, economic development and increasing degradation of freshwater resources make the actual management of urban waters unsustainable for the world of tomorrow. Competition between water users, inadequate technologies or inappropriate managerial approaches makes better and adequate capacity building necessary. Furthermore, due to academic financial restrictions, PhD students are often limited in their ability to present and discuss their ongoing research projects at an international level. The LEESU research group and the H2o Association organise in the framework of the "University for water and sustainable development" of the Val-de-Marne County (South-East of Paris) an annual doctoral workshop dedicated to young environmental scientists. Since the creation of the workshop in 2001, the thematic outline is "Urban waters, resource or risk", emphasizing the necessity of the integration of human activity in the natural environment to enable sustainable development of urban space. The workshop is multidisciplinary joining natural (urban hydrology, chemistry, ecology, health sciences...) and social sciences (architecture, management, decision making...), to improve trans-disciplinary discussions and social commitment of the scientific research in the field of integrated water management. This workshop is characterized by a non formal work environment stimulating scientific creativity, exchange and discussion between participants, which number is limited to 25. For each participant, both papers and oral presentations especially focus on: o The scientific context, o The research questions together with their environmental justification, o The field and/or laboratory and/or model methodologies that are currently or will be used, together with their justification for addressing the questions presented before, o The planned research activity, o The significance and limitations of these methodologies for developing countries. Indeed this workshop is not mostly dedicated to present original results (the purpose of all conventional scientific conferences), but to present, discuss and justify methodologies selected by each PhD student. Furthermore, taking into account the large field of "urban water", papers and presentations are well illustrated for being well understood. Finally, taking into account the large participation of students issued from developing countries, each paper and oral presentation should also include some discussion of the benefits and limitations of such methodologies within developing countries, where most up-to-date technology is often not available. The five days of the workshop are dedicated: o To the presentation, discussion and assessment of the individual research projects of each participant and o To the building-up of international environmental research projects. o A half-day of the workshop is dedicated to a technical visit of urban water management equipments in the Val de Marne County. An evening session is dedicated to the public 1 / 141 WWW-YES-2011 proceedings (draft version) presentation and discussion of an international survey, conducted by the workshop participants, on drinking water resource, production and distribution conditions in selected towns. In conclusion the capacity building objectives of the WWW-YES workshop are focussed on 8 major tasks of an environmental scientist who wishes to reach an international expertise level: 1. Ability to present, discuss and build collaborations using English as a communication language, 2. Prepare a well formatted and structured scientific paper according to International Water Association guidelines, 3. Prepare a review report on a paper submitted for publication in an international journal and make general comments as well as specific questions to the author(s), 4. Chair a scientific presentation and discussion on a topic not closely related to your own one, i.e. moderate the discussion, find justified questions if necessary, control the discussion time, 5. Build an international work group including both nature and human scientists, working efficiently on a common goal, 6. Build a collaborative research project according to an international call and to limited time and strict format constrains and justify it for an international expert panel, 7. Conduct a scientific survey on a given city and collect both technical, economical and social data, the 3 major pillars of a sustainable development approach, 8. Present and discuss environmental or sustainable development issues to/with an non specialised public made of elected representatives and local citizens. Program Oral presentation (6 to 9 June 2011) Each participant has prepared and uploaded prior to 4 April 2011 a 6-10 page manuscript following the suggested format. Each participant has prepared a 10 min scientific presentation, in English, on his / her research project and is ready for 30 min detailed scientific discussion during the workshop, also exclusively in English, chaired by the workshop participant in charge of reviewing his/her manuscript. The oral presentation (ca. 10 slides) should especially focus on: o The scientific context of the research subject, o The research questions that are expected to be answered during the PhD preparation, together with their environmental justification, o The field and/or laboratory and/or model methodologies that are currently or will be used, together with their justification for addressing the questions presented before, o One or two major results obtained so far, o The planned research activity till the end of the PhD (or after its termination, in the case of a PhD which is already finished), o The significance and limitations of these methodologies for developing countries. Workshop participants are reminded of the large diversity of background knowledge within their colleagues, i.e. from natural to human sciences: thus these oral presentations should be extremely clear and well illustrated, allowing non-specialists of the research field to understand the raised environmental questions and the applied methods. Each participant has received a manuscript to review, using a referee report form: this review was expected to be filled and sent back prior to 26 April 2011 to Daniel Thevenot, who has then send these 2 / 141 11th World Wide Workshop for Young Environmental Scientists WWW-YES-2011 Urban waters: resource or risks? Arcueil, France (5 - 10 June 2011) reports to the author of the refereed manuscript. Thus WWW-YES-2011 participants should be ready, after their oral presentation, to answer to comments and questions raised by his/her referee. A printed version of the proceedings draft version will be given to each participant upon arrival. In the meanwhile a light version of this document will be available on the web: due to file size limitations on this server, all photographs and numerous illustrations may have to be deleted. Since 2008, all participants are offered to publish their paper in an Open Source specific collection (http://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/WWW-YES/fr/ ). Field visit (Tuesday 7 June 2011 afternoon) A half-day technical visit on urban water issues will be organised at several sites of Bièvre valley, close to Arcueil. The SIAVB will explain the Bièvre River management upstream the highly urbanised part of the river where it becomes a domestic underground sewer. A visit of one of the hydraulic regulation lakes will follow. Finally, participants will discover parts of the Bièvre River where it has been re-opened, in the middle of a newly designed park (Parc des Prés). This visit will be accompanied by senior scientist to ensure the transfer of knowledge and the discussion with the representatives of the local water authority. Public discussion on drinking water management (Tuesday 7 June 2011 evening) In the evening of Tuesday 7 June, all WWW-YES participants are invited to take part to a public discussion session with institutions, associations and citizens of the Bièvre valley on the topic of "Drinking water management: results of an international survey conducted by young environmental scientists". This public discussion will take place at Jean Vilar picture theatre (few hundred meters from CAVB buildings at Arcueil) after a documentary English speaking film presentation on the Ganges River (Ganga Maya). Translation to/from English will be offered to the workshop participants, so that they understand the questions raised by the French public and are able to reply in English and be understood by the public. Thus each selected participant has received an html link to an on-line survey questionnaire which should have been filled prior to 4 April 2011 on a city of his/her choice (except for cities which have been surveyed by participants of past WWW-YES editions). For the same deadline, each participant have sent to Daniel Thévenot 3 JPG pictures files and a country map illustrating the drinking water equipment and/or problems on the selected city as well as a map of the country indicating the city location. Four voluntary workshop participants have prepared an English summary presentation of the surveyed