digital-water.city has just had his very first general assembly on the 17th and 18th of September in Berlin: 24 partners from all over the European Union gathered and talked about the DWC project. A stimulating meeting, full of promising solutions to address current and future water-related challenges!

An overview of DWC cities and digital solutions

The first part of the first day was dedicated to an overview of the project with pitches from partners, city leaders and technological providers. Thus, participants got some further information about each of the 15 digital solutions like the mobile application for asset management of drinking water wells or the sensors and smart analytics for tracking illicit sewer connections hotspots. They were also informed about what are the exact challenges and expectations for each demonstration city. After this quick overview, the second part of the day has given the floor to Arctik for the communication strategy, as well as Sintef for cybersecurity and interoperability issues. Arctik’s presentation was a great opportunity to present the visual identity of DWC and the development of the DWC website 2.0. After some fruitful feedback from the external advisory board, all the participants visited one of the pumping stations of Berlin. A technical visit that was concluded by… a very good German dinner in a famous restaurant!

World café for community of practices and work package meetings

The World Café methodology is a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue that can be adapted to meet a wide variety of needs. In this configuration, three tables were hosted by each work package leader. City leaders then rotate through these to have “semi-guided” conversations. Among commonalities between cities, there were some interest in exchanging experiences, collaboration with ongoing projects, the necessity to involve relevant stakeholders for building trust and the challenge of data exchange.

The second part of the day was devoted to work package meetings with some updates about the ICT governance and policy, the market uptake and the discussion on inter-WP collaborations. The steering committee meeting ended this very first general assembly of digital-water.city!