(by Werner Weeink, Twente University)
The 7th of June was the most important for the wetskill.com project teams during the Holland Water Week at the World Expo in Shanghai. During the day we wandered about at the expo terrain and visited a number of pavilions. Despite the fact of creativity of some of the architects and the impressive expo terrain, we all were the most excited about the evening program in Happy Street’s –the Dutch pavilion- VIP room.
After a short introduction by Jeroen van der Sommen, director of the Netherlands Water Partnership, it was our time to present our solutions for complex water problems during a 2-minutes-pitch to an international public. Later on there was time for the public and the jury to judge the pitches and the posters, were the solutions were presented in more detail.
The “Live, Love, Levee” concept was the big and justified winner of the evening with a multifunctional levee as their solution to the problems related to flood protection and integrand developments in urban areas. Despite the fact that our solution –a multifunctional pipeline system for Jakarta to solve the sediment and water supply problem in this city- it was an amazing and impressive evening, even more supported by the fact the water professionals familiar with Jakarta’s problem voted unanimous for our solution.
This evening was a nice ending of our collaboration with the Chinese students; during the project we were not improving our wet skills only, as important was the fact that we learned a lot from working in a project team with intercultural differences.
