 Okay, so I welcome everybody to this afternoon's session of the special occasion to the at the graduation ceremony of the this year's conference and students at IUG Delft, and we have always a small symposium at the very beginning this year, two talks and the first one is Taana Obrecht from Isoologic, which is also such a company, a company I started out of school and could have been one time affiliated to this institution to the IUG Delft, and I'm very much looking forward to it, so thank you for coming. Thank you. Let me first try to light the lighter. Well, welcome everybody. So, online class 4 and the graduating students today. Just look how many are you? 24. I saw that everybody is here, yes. Hope the rest will arrive soon. Well, very welcome. I tend to say welcome even though I'm not a staff member here anymore, but I've been a staff member for so long a time here that I tend to say welcome to everybody. So, to the students of course, to family online maybe, and former colleagues, professors. It's an honor to be here and to talk to you about higher informatics today. I will give you a brief overview of what we are doing in our company, so that we first start by introducing myself. I'm actually a similar here from Team Delft sitting here. I graduated in 86, so it's 33 years ago. Then I started working with the U.S. Ucal System, this is called Royal Hospital in the U.S. U.D. today. During that period, I started my U.S. U.D. research here at TU in control of heart systems, and right after I got my U.S. U.D. diploma, I started also at I.G. here in part time. So, I've worked here for 15 years in the same institute. In the year 2000, I established this company called Hyperlogic, which I'll tell you a lot more soon. We are basically very active in the field of water management, and we knew so by modelling, red modelling, agro-logical modelling, and also ICT solutions. So, this is what my talk is going to be about, the ICT solutions. Then 10 years later, I started a company, which is actually the research branch of Hyperlogic, together with former colleague of I.C. Sattel, and the company is here, actually, at the Vest Fest as well, so it's qualified. Then we do the research activities I've got. And then four years later, I started another company, that was the last one I promised to myself, which is focusing much more on weather and climate, and that company I established together with a good friend of mine, Peter Thiengstav, is also the national weather management efforts. I'll focus on Hyperlogic, but by then, I will show you some achievements of water impact as well. This is our office in Aarhusport. We are there with around 40 people from Hyperlogic, and eight from Weather Impact. This is the office here in Doth, the spread opposite, and the railways, thank you. And these are people from the Aarhusport office. To give you an idea of what kind of plugins we are working for, I made this overview. There are many more, but these are just representing the client groups. We work a lot for weather authority, 60% of our work for municipalities, and all the other clients we should see here. In the Netherlands, we work for almost all water boards, and 100 municipalities. I found this beautiful picture of the Stubendieu, this is in River Rhine actually, and I show this because this is one of the regulating structures which we have in the River Rhine, one of the major rivers in the Netherlands, next to the Meuse. And why I show this is because we help our climate impacts by the staff in managing the water amounts, which comes through this weir and to distribute it over a country. And especially, you can hardly imagine, but we have drought problems in this country. And especially in summer periods, it is essential that we divert the water correctly to ensure that nobody who just gets enough water. So this is representing that. This is the highland feed source. Anyone who has ever ridden the highland feed sources? No? This is at the very mouth of River Rhine. And the interesting thing is that this is the sweet estuary. It's closed off from the sea and only when there is excess water it's flowing to the sea. And now the government has taken the decision to open these sources also where you have high tide to allow inflow of stagline water into the estuary, which is sweet right now. And the idea is to allow salmon and trout to pass this source and to swim upstream. And the challenge, of course, is to ensure that this salt water is not entering our irrigation system, which we have in the country, of course, and also the water intake for drinking water. So we have to, by regulating this structure, there's a lot of research in that respect. I think it's the box, at least the box, wherever it is. The one that's connected to the microphone. It's here, here it is. I'm not sure what's coming. This one seems to work. Yeah, here I go. Okay. So we have them in controlling, in finding control rules for our students. This is meant to be where I go to walk. The reception is where? Close here. Ah, over here? Yeah. So this is another picture of the Netherlands. This is in 1995, the situation where we have a flood in the Netherlands. And the water levels in the different routes are so high that there was the risk of these developments over topping my work. And this led to the evacuation of 250,000 people from that particular area. And unfortunately, dives didn't break. So after two weeks, everybody could return safely home. But this type of events are a trigger, actually, for many water boards in the Netherlands to start investigating how to deal with such events and how to ensure that people are out of the area in time and how to manage the water as far as it is possible. So we have them a lot in this type of work. This is last year, a very dry year. Shipping was highly possible in our rivers. And this was an extreme situation. We never faced that before. It's two years in a row, looks like now. And this causes lots of losses in the shipping industry because the cargo shipping was hardly possible during those days. This is diapers. And the diapers, which happened after a dry period. This was 2003. And this is deep dive. We have 4500 kilometers of deep dives in the Netherlands. And probably they will all be very sensitive to this type of drying, which is happening here. And through which this type broke, actually. So we have flooding in a dry period. So this is also new. And it led to a new movement in the Netherlands to do more frequent dive inspections. So what we do as hydrology, we advise our clients through our tools where and when to do these inspections. On the basis of satellite images, we determine how dry the dives. So we can work with our work in a more optimal way. This is a typical rain gauge of which we use lots of data. There are a few more. This is the radar with which we measure rainfall in the Netherlands. This is the KNY built groundwater. Sensoring, we use a lot for satellite images to determine salt moisture. This is what we call the control room. This is our control room. But behind that is the software which we deliver. And actually this waterboard was the first one to take a subscription to our services, which we call hibernate, the hibernate services. And they use our software to get an overview of the water management in the system, the ongoing process of water management. And so they have a digital information here, which they can have in any location basically that don't have to move here in this control. But this is a nice example of also our physical control. This is in 2013. You can see the happy man there. All right, that's me. I was so happy because we won a prize. ICT Innovation Award in 2013. This is a national prize for best product of the year. But it was also a hibernate. And I'm even more proud about this 2017, two years ago. We won the Partners for Water Award. And it was for a sustainable project which we performed with partners in South Africa, of which I'm going to show you more shortly. Let's have a look at the hibernate services which we developed for water professionals. And this is basically all what I'm going to show you is typically hibernate. But let's start with this film first to give you an introduction. Water managers have huge challenges because of climate change. It has to make very difficult decisions because it has to do with floods. And the first step to make the right decisions is to get access to data. Because you don't know what the goal of this project is. You can already identify suitable measures to reduce the impact. And before a hibernate in the water management unit had to search for data. You get one website, you get another, you get a data basis. The hibernate becomes all that workflow. So they just open the dashboard in the field for the internet connection. And they always see you making data. So they don't need to search for data. And I think it's a government-to-government program. We worked together with the project investment management agency for a long time already. And I think it's something that I thought about. And I think it's something that I really need to keep in mind. I will not tell you about that. I think that it really needs to be organized. In the past, water management made it possible to implement hibernate of every demonstration project in one of the CNAs. Now it's going to be all the same. South Africa suffers from water stress. There isn't enough food quality water coming. And climate events such as our menial worsening situation. Because of the growing economy and population by 2030, the total demand will be way up high for the use of land ability. The only solution is to manage and utilize this precious resource much more efficiently. To make reliable water management decisions, access to historic, current and forecasted weather information is a key importance. Therefore, if we think we can work together, we can sometimes make better decisions. We have a lot of real-time information. If you didn't have the official tools to give it to your clients and share it, with the authorization of the National Service, pay mine and have a life, we can aim to improve our data policy and build our data system. And while we make all our data available to hydrants, with the relationship that we have with our commercial companies, we're able to do and understand their requirements and provide the right information for intimate food decisions. But first, South Africa has no knowledge of water. The topic, the water management control group, has been in the market for two years. Well, I don't know if I can just say and show that. However, before our users got caught with quality of water and with access and monitoring potential, we had to find out about the punishment. I think that we need to ensure that that's the way to ensure that the decisions are made as soon as we are able to have the water management have a good future for us. But I don't know if I can just say that South Africa is still shocked of the water availability or able to look at the rainfall and the situation for the future, how much quality of water will help and the resources and the contacts that are available in South Africa will help us with the contacts. What kind of relief will we have and whether we might be able to make a decision with our own health in terms of water management and access to water? Well, I don't know if it's a very open and tangible ICC solution, which also is a very open project. So, in this project, we're really more able to benefit from the actual QDC of all the partners. And it's very easy to add new data, to add new tools, to add new knowledge and become part of our construction. So, because of the scalability, I can not only use in South Africa, but also or in other countries. More than 2,500 users at the moment and there are 30,000. It's fantastic to see that thanks to appropriations of South African water service, not only the water market, but also the agriculture market and the energy market. So, in the end, we already have 25 follow-up contracts and we expect more. So, just to summarize what shows you in the film, you see here the different uses of hydrogen and what you can do with the system. So, it's built to build these digital water control rooms. You can have personalized dashboards, so every user can have his own dashboard. It's accessible through any computer device. It's used for trans-boundary studies and dashboards. So, they share the same dashboard. Community portals to communicate with the public. Notifications and warnings for water professionals, mainly automatic reports. I'll show you a few of the examples. Now, currently, IronEd is being used by 4,600 users in 12 countries. And these are the countries where we are. You see high concentration in the eastern part of it. So, these are the applications of IronEd for water management. And I'll go through them very briefly. This is what we call the rain watch application, where you can click on the map and then get rainfall information, which is measured by radar or rain gauges. You'll get a time series if you look at the film. This is the dashboard which is used by the South African Weather Service to look at their own data, basically. This is a control room which we have developed for X-Rider Star together with the water boards, the surrounding water boards, with which they can work together and see some low water levels coming right here. So, a few days ahead. They can compare also the current situation with the historic situation to probability analysis. So, this is used very intensively by large groups of protectionists. This is what we call traffic light approach, in which you use these different colors to show whether the situation is as wanted or not. So, all the green dots are okay. And we use that also a lot to get a very fast overview of what's happening in the water system. This is a similar approach, but now for groundwater. And here we compare again with long-year averages. And this is also used to determine when agriculture cannot use any irrigation water anymore. So, it cannot be subtracted anymore from groundwater. So, water boards use this a lot. And this is based on satellite imagery. We determine, let's say, the wetness of the soil. So, not only the moisture, but the wetness including walls for the subsoil to determine whether there's a dry period coming or a very bad period coming. So, if the soil is completely soaked and there is an extra rainfall, you get discharges much fast. But this is also used a lot to see these changes of seasons, for instance, in the Netherlands. These pictures are taken during a training, a training of operators. And they use what we call the Fizir, the water control room also in the Water Board Riviereland, where they have a complete overview of the risky areas along Dijks. And also, they can monitor the measures which are taken. So, it's the closing of copures and the use of sluices and all kinds of regulating structures. This type of training is done once a year. You can see that even the military is involved when they work here. So, it's very nice to be there and to see how things are happening in practice. And it's good to know that people are prepared for such events as in 1995. This is in Australia. There is a very open policy with respect to flooding risks. So, there's a flood map. It's open to the public. You can click on the map where your house is, for instance, and determine what the top risk of your house is. There's a lot of discussion going on about this in the Netherlands where we should do similar things. And right now, we are not doing it because it also determines, of course, your premium for your insurance. This is another control room recently developed for the Hermana project in Colombia. This is actually what the quality and what the quantity management in the power plant held. And all these things are also configured to be configured on your mobile phone. So, every user can have a mobile phone that shows that. So, let me now show you the achievements which you actually have in water also for agriculture. Also, this we can call Hyroinformatics Applications Board. This is what we call water auditing. What auditing is a way for the water boards to determine how much water is used by farmers and whether they have passed the limits of the contracts which they have with the water boards because they should not be using too much water. And this is down to the field level. So, 50,000 fields are monitored in this way. And you can see here in the map that everything which is red is too much water use. And by using this application only for just a few years they were able to reduce the water use by 20%. So, that's quite something in a drug-sensitive country. This is a novel thing which there's a large program going on in the map about the making available of all kinds of agricultural services to large groups of farmers. And we are involved there as well. So, it is a lady with a feature form. So, now the question is how to get the information on how to do the water management and the agriculture to this lake. Now, this happens to all kinds of applications. This is one more advanced which runs on a smartphone application which is available in many languages, as you can see. And they get very specific local advices on, for instance, when to sow, what the grow capacity of the vegetation is. I have all these things like this with microphones. Yeah, but also when to harvest. So, the best moment to harvest is also present. It's just a few of the users of this phone app. These are farmers in South Africa on the occasion of the introduction of the AgriCloud app. Now, how do these people get this information? You get it through, for instance, extension workers. These have smartphones. They register the farmers, so they register the name, the location, kind of crop, and so on. And then, when these people are registered, we can send via SMS the messages to them. So, they get very local information on, for instance, this type of weather forecast, but also all kinds of agricultural advisories. Right. To briefly show you something of the business models which we have developed very briefly, because as a company we have to live from this type of services. It's not only research, it's really, really practice. So, I will show you very briefly how we do it. Basically, as hydrologic, we can provide all the services necessary. We can do the data, the applications, the platform, the internet we have. We distribute the application to the clients, to the end users. We can do all these things ourselves, and we actually do in the Netherlands. But when you go abroad, when you go to different countries, that's much more difficult, because you have no local network at all. So, we found that a much better way of working and we applied it in the Netherlands now as well, is to work in teams of different organizations where every organization does the job in which it is best. So, you see here different roles now. And these can all be different organizations. That's also true for what we call the providers. These are usually research institutes which helps us to validate the data which we are delivering. Now, how does it look like for the water monitoring app for South Africa, which I just showed you? Here it is. Well, the same roles you have here. And you can see here that the end user is the Incomanti, the one of the film. South African Weather Service, the local distributor. So, they ensure that all the information is going to the end users. We provide the platform. We have jointly developed with a company called E-Leave, their experts in satellite information the applications which we serve. The data is not from us. It's from E-Leave again, and South African Weather Service and the knowledge providers in this case are KMI and some Dutch water boards. This formula works. And actually, we as a company live from this for a large share extent. And to show you how it looks when you go to other types of applications in different countries. Well, these are other partners which whom we work. And, well, these are just few and it's actually growing. So, this is our business model and it ensures that all the different parties in this chain get a fair share of the income from this type of application. Well, with this, I would like to conclude my keynote and hope I've given you a few of how you can use hydroinformatics services to assist water managers and to help them to do their jobs better in creating better water quality, deal with drought situations, especially to deal with floods. Thank you. Thank you very much for this very enlightening, very interesting day. Much developed already. And working facility based on very good scientific and also interrelated network facilities. So that's, I think, something to look into also for the students. They will be interested also to ask questions. So this is not a time to ask questions. Maybe to give you some. They expect to be graduated this afternoon. So then our question is look at the incentive. This is a potential company hiring and people that have graduation ceremony in the afternoon. So maybe that's the priority in the world. But also we can start with Luis from CISMO. Sorry, I don't know. The drones. Yes, well, I didn't show it. Well, we're working with drone. It's not a commercial product yet. But we are researching how we can use drones to make inventories for instance of drought and cracks in dice, this one. But also we have recently finished a study to research whether we can identify people in flooded areas to know where to send help. So this way we, well, entering that area. But for us as a company it's very important that we go into areas where others don't go. So we look at the white spots. So it's called efficient infections. Okay. Yeah. Many. So if you start the students. So there are different purposes to the. But is it possible to deal with conflict in interest, for example, if agriculture conflicts with the water management policy and water water policy. Does the platform have to do that? Very good question because especially in those situations where you have limited resources, how to divert the water. So the platform doesn't say the water manager what to do, but it shows the different options. So you have all kinds of scenario analysis, but also along the information on how the current state in the water system is already quite a step forward for many water controlling agencies. So we don't do automatic control. We don't do the automatic optimization or the diversion of water over different users. But we are twice the size. So additional questions. Okay. So the question is like the data distribution system. Does logic also take care of that? Do you at least look into that portion of it? Like was the data has been processed and distributed to the farmers. So do you also look into that? Like how much is the success rate of that? Yeah, yeah. We did so in Ethiopia actually, one of the countries where we are active. So these extension workers went out to determine what farmers think of the quality of very forecast which we provided. And they were very, very enthusiastic. And I think 95% was a very positive about the weather forecast. And then we asked additional questions because we couldn't believe that our forecasts are so good. And then it appeared that they have no source of information at all at the moment. So whatever, even when it is uncertain, information you give them, which is of course more or less close to the truth, it helps them already a lot. So we get this feedback and we expect actually more feedback because we wanted to use these smartphone apps to create actually a link with Yantus and to get their feedback continuously about the quality of our forecasts so that we can make our forecast more specific to those locations. There's one final question I have to say because time is running so we can hand over to Graham to ask another question. Yeah, from the previous slide. So how do the sudden partners in this data chain more than just in terms of information? Yeah, good question. So we, as a technique, we think it is to work in this way. So we have developed this as well as a small thing which we ensure that the different part is involved in providing one indication, for instance, to ensure that every organization helps get a fair share. So what we usually do when we enter a new market, no one can earn anything. So when the first client is found, then we start to distribute it over the different parts. Also balancing how much data we invest. But these apps can distribute very rapidly and we have quite a bit of 450,000 entries for the e-culture apps. So we don't have their e-cum yet because small partners already go through for other apps. We actually work for it in those kind of spaces. And also even when they distribute these apps to citizens, then they are still the ones who are planning to be insured or being done. So it's actually a fair share. To give you an example, we are also going to be developing that which is providing information on plots so you can go to the field to make pictures and they connect them to the island platform. When the income comes, we distribute it over the different parts which are in the pool. And the same is for instance for Esri. Esri is also a platform provider like we are. So if client has already an Esri subscription, they can use this algorithm. So there's always a burning wall for different parties involved. But how it is composed also depends on their roles and the investments which have to do to make their shares of money. Okay. We can discuss that later. I think that's also a very important aspect of doing research, doing company. There needs to be some basis for that. So it's understandable. I think we have also to clap again our hands to thank you for your contribution and for the questions that you have. We come to the second speaker of this small symposium. It is Almatan's daughter, a company that's maybe even more well known than Haider. Logic, which is Shell. The company has always been very much interested in water. Maybe as a live product, they need for exploring, for example, this. So it gives me some chance to go to bridge until when things connected again and listen to a very interesting talk on prospects and challenges for future hydrogeologists and energy. Yeah, so congratulations. First of all, to all of you, the students in particular and also the teachers who managed to bring these students up to this level. Yeah, my name is Matthijs Bonte. I work with Shell Global Solutions. The talk I'll be giving today is sort of more general on groundwater challenges in the in different kinds of energy. So I'm not here officially representing Shell or anything. I'm taking examples and trying to show you of different things I did throughout my career as a hydrogeologist. I thought are really illustrative of the challenges that you find in the energy sector. Okay. Is it working now? Okay. Now this one. I'll start with you. This is one of the other computers. Andi, but I didn't have that one. I thought maybe. Okay. Okay. Okay. So first little introduction about myself. Then have a little look at how the world will change in terms of energy. I think that's an important context setter. And then I'll be talking about the links and how as a hydrogeologist you can work on different projects. So I'm going to be both looking at the fossil energies working now for Shell. So that's most of my work now. And also some of the new energy forms, some of the new renewable energies that I've been working on while still at currently and also in my previous jobs. So what I intended to do was mainly to make you enthusiastic especially the part from the groundwater watch program to make you enthusiastic of all the new opportunities that this transition in the energy world will bring also for hydrogeologists. Working myself at Shell often people are surprised that they say why does Shell own or employ hydrogeologists while they're in a big company working in a big energy field a lot of areas where groundwater knowledge is necessary. So first a little bit about myself. I graduated in 2000 at the Fugh University Wageningen in hydrogeology. My final project was with Mr. Stichter in Portugal looking at the salinization in the Algarve which was a good start of my career. Then I worked for a number of years first in Australia and also in Yemen Indonesia and especially water supply projects for different sectors also mining in Australia. So quite a variety of different things. 2008 I went to KWR which is a company unbiode water utilities in the Netherlands research organization and I started looking at predominantly Shell of geothermal energy and how it impacts on groundwater quality. And then about 6 years ago I went to Shell the oil and gas sector and looking maybe at water sourcing for projects and contaminated land management. And below are some nice holiday pictures that I took while working. So a bit of a primer what will the tomorrow's energy supply look like for us? Well we basically don't really know for certain that's the real truth. We can speculate about it and that's what different organizations in the world do. For example the IEA the International Energy Agency you have NGOs like Greenpeace and you also have Shell as a scenarios department that put in the world different scenarios of where the world could be heading depending on technology development on policy developments and then they sort of speculate how the energy distribution could look like. So there are different scenarios here that depend on how much aggressive policy change will be and the latest Shell scenario took into consideration the Paris Agreement and the emissions that are formulated there and developed the Shell scenario which shows that basically oil will quite drastically be phased out still be needed in 2100. Gas will also be phased out quite a lot and especially solar and to a lesser extent wind will really take over and also geothermal will be quite an important supplier of renewable energy. So the obvious question for this group of people is obviously what does that mean for hydrogeologists who are starting their career now and who are probably going to be working until maybe not 2100 but at least 2050 or 2070 I imagine. Overall the picture is more and cleaner energy. So big picture, the challenge if you look at the population growth also there's going to be more people more prosperity the rise of level of wealth and especially the developing countries will increase a lot like you see in China for example putting in huge burden on energy demands and also on water and they are all related. So let me start off with the sort of fossil fuel sector I'm working now. How does hydrogeologists work in that sector and what kind of challenges do you encounter in that sector and what does it mean with the transition that we are facing now. So two photos here, one from Nigeria a completely different setting than us and I think the right hand photo is where you have the Jagdnikers famous for the Dutch people if you look at sort of the big picture the kind of topics that I work on can be divided in two groups it's basically contaminated land management so if you have an accidental release of hydrocarbons you need to manage that, you need to clean it up you need to assess the risks can be both on small retail sites increasing to depots and refineries and pipelines and on the right hand side you have more the water sourcing aspect so in all parts of the sort of value chain of oil and gas you have a quiet water so you often require it to extract oil to wash it at upstream facilities in gas, development refineries have a huge water demand so that's a critical part of that work especially for new projects but also for existing facilities which can be located in areas where water resources are stressed because of climate change or because of increasing population. In words what are these kind of issues last couple years it's been mostly contaminated land so you have legacy contamination issues so legacy needs to be there for a while and you start to redevelop an area and then you need to deal with those issues that's an area that I'm expecting to increase quite a bit as the portfolio of companies like Shell or other companies will shift towards away from oil and gas then a lot of these facilities need to be cleaned up and if they are for example close to urban areas they represent quite some value for the ground so they need to be redeveloped and remediated so the water used I mentioned that already the fracking is a lot in the news but also with conventional oil there's a huge water demand leaking wells or allegedly leaking wells that's even a topic I put in there it was last week on the news in the Netherlands where this issue was brought up and fracking that's probably the topic that I can defend myself mostly against family dinners that I have to defend Shell from all the things that I've done there so I think that's also the last sentence there it's often controversial, the projects but interesting work for hydrogeology you do often find yourself defending because you work in the sort of environmental department of leak oil but they do represent interesting projects and I think myself and so it's like it is there, it has brought a lot of prosperity over the last hundred years so you do need to also responsibly deal with the environmental impacts so in that sense it's quite valuable to work as an hydrogeologist in a company like that that's sort of the bigger picture interesting project examples a few of work I did in the last couple of years this first example is I think really the opposite end of what was just presented on the high tech, this is really low tech, this is in Nigeria where everybody knows that there's a lot of issues with spills over there there can be operational leaking pipelines they're often by sabotage because pipelines run through areas but people don't have access to energy so there's just a lot of issues with theft of crude oil but regardless of the cost they are cleaned up and a typical issue with working in those sort of environments is that it's really hard to get good reliable analytical data so ideally if you were in Holland you would want to, before you remediate an area and after you need to collect soil samples, you analyze them in a lab and you look at whether the practice was sufficient or not in Nigeria there aren't any reliable labs basically there are labs but they just keep on failing the QAQC tests so if we want to collect samples we send them off to the UK or to the Netherlands so in sort of different expertise in oil spill response, especially coastal areas they use a process called the SCAT process which was developed by the US Oceanographic department, the government where they base it solely on observations which is quite useful for oil because it's so clearly visible in sediments because it has a sheen, you see the droplets so you can get a lot of information just by looking at it rather than analyzing it but this was sort of a concept that if you are more in terrestrial environments where different legislations apply the regulator needed to be taken on board with that so we did a comparison where we compared this sort of SCAT approach with the traditional laboratory analysis to see what the accuracy of it is and basically you find that it's less accurate than the lab analysis but also if you look at the variability between grabbing a sample here and grabbing it 5 meters away you also have an enormous variability and if you look at the actual objective of what you want to achieve, for example less than certain thresholds you can quite well use it but the big advantage of this that you can go out into the field with the stakeholders so with the people from the community with the regulators and you can do the assessment basically there and then and decide on how you want to clean it up and when it is enough so basically this was a calibration approach, absolutely low tech but really valuable in doing that work together with stakeholders so completely on the other end of the spectrum is dealing with the contaminated sites in the Netherlands where you have a benzene plume which leaked down 30 meters and you need to assess where the biodegradation is occurring or you need to assess where the drinking water supplies or impacts it or not so obviously you cannot see it with your bare eyes what we did there together with our consultants is looked at the isotopes of benzene so basically what you can do is look at the C12 and C13 so there are different isotopes within the benzene molecule and what's really interesting is that the microbes the bugs that eat the benzene potentially they can't see that difference and they prefer to eat the lighter isotopic benzene so basically what you can do is you can look at the isotopic distribution within the benzene to see whether it's degrading or not and that's shown here where you see basically a measure of the isotopic concentrations in deuterium and C13 and on the lower end you see the source zone so where the contamination is leaked and going further into the plume you see the lower decreasing concentrations but you see increasing weight of that isotope and basically you can use that increase in weight to quantify how much biodegradation has occurred for more complex sites you use more complex tools but for a simple oil spill you can also use the bear eyes combined with analytical tools another interesting example of a study we did about three years ago again in Africa is looking at remediation or improving of remediation technologies if we need to clean up a spill site the common way to do that in Africa especially if it's still on the ground surface is by land farming and this is basically a technology where you collect the impacted soil you aerate it sufficiently by breaking it up and by adding fertilizer which provides nutrients to the bacteria and you basically let it sit and then after a month you may break it up again to allow new entry of air into that soil and that's extremely effective but it was also sometimes challenged by parties involved that there should be other methods that are more effective for example by adding bugs deliberately so bacteria that can eat it up adding surfactants or adding all sorts of things which from a commercial perspective it obviously adds to pride or increases the price and there was also some real doubts whether it would really be speeding up things at those sites so we did what's called a mesocosm study mesocosms are basically these plastic containers or microcosms you do in a lab with very small bottles mesocosm is a big small or bigger that's sort of like a cubic meter scale next phase is sort of a real field skill where we had about 30 of these containers filled them up with soil spiked it with oil and then tried 7 different amendments all in triplicate and some controls and see what works best and we found that a lot of these products, they have fancy names like oil eater 2000 or magic oil busted booster didn't really work and some of them even worked a lot less it really boosts the oil it kept the oil in there actually what did work was a biodegradation which is sort of an organic product it's developed by several companies, one of them in the UK that did seem to speed it up but the problem with that was that if you have a jar it can also sort oil to it so it was sometimes a bit hard at least that was my challenge are we really seeing biodegradation are we seeing less availability of crude oil and that you may also not pick it up in the extraction in the lab anymore it was a very good second and if you sort of combine the prices that you see that biodegradation would increase the cost of remediation by a factor of 10 where it's fertilizer is much simpler and you may need a month more if you have the space then it's an obvious choice in this type of work we did actually with the IUCN which is an NGO together with their input and it was also published in literature so this type of work we do try to make as publicly available as possible so fourth example of a project that is ongoing now ecological restoration and fighter remediation it's a claim that's often made in literature that if you can take plants they can grow on impacted soil they can actually speed up remediation by their roots and by the way they interact with soil so we are piloting that now actually the first question at that side is can we even replant the area and at what levels do we need to decrease the oil to be able to replant in this case mangroves before they can start growing again and it's really surprising that in these areas how tolerant these mangroves are they can tolerate up to 3-4% oil in the sediment we have different degrees of oiling in test plots and now we are seeing whether they are actually actively decreasing the oil content in those test plots okay then different sector renewables obviously the future more or less geothermal ground source heating, biofuel solar they all have a link with groundwater in wind energy I haven't really seen it but with these type of technologies I've always seen a link with groundwater biofuels and solar I won't really go into that but that's obviously the water demand, even for solar seen projects for example in Pakistan or India where water demand for washing of solar panels can be a real issue to see where you need to get that from biofuels it's much more clear it's like an agricultural crop so you need good water management to get high yields now I'll go into geothermal and especially ground source heating this has done a lot of work in that area so geothermal that's in the last 5 years really boomed in the Netherlands so geothermal is really the deep type of drilling where you drill up to 2-3 kilometers you extract water that is 70-100 degrees and you use it for warming in the Netherlands it's especially used by horticulture so greenhouses there's increasing scrutiny by the regulator on that topic and often the questions are all related to impacts to water or a lot it's also related to tremors for example but it's basically the same questions as you see with oil and gas so leaky wells, spills of fluids at the ground surface interestingly often they target geothermal formations which are in other areas in the Netherlands oil and gas formations so they co-produce a lot of oil and gas which then needs to be treated and it's interesting because it's really a new sector that then needs to deal with the same problems that oil and gas has been dealing with for 50 years but they don't really talk to each other so a lot of these projects when they started they suddenly got oil in their well or gas especially and they needed to figure out how to deal with it but they're all environmental issues that if you look at the prognosis of how many geothermal wells there are expected in the Netherlands that will require hydrogeological expertise to assess those projects another area where we've looked at extensively when I was working at KWR is around aquifer thermal energy storage ATS so that's also called shallow geothermal energy it's not actually extracting heat from the deep surface but it's using more the shallow or aquifers to store seasonal heating so what you do is in winter for example you extract water which is then warmer than the outside around 10 degrees then 12 degrees with the heat pump you can heat the building with it the water cools down and you inject it back to the aquifer and in summer you re-extract it and you can cool down with it so quite a lot of that's really an enormous boom in the Netherlands at the moment that's well you need hydrogeological design for almost any of those systems because you need to know whether the right aquifers are present and what the surrounding neighbors are doing with groundwater so it's for the hydrogeologists in the Netherlands that's really a booming sector that a lot of people are active in I didn't work in a design myself I worked in on addressing questions that were raised by the water companies the same aquifers that these systems are put in are also used by water companies for your drinking water supply and they had the legitimate question well okay hold on we've got maybe Teju Delft with their 8S well located 500 degrees away from me what does that do with the water quality if they extract and eat up the water and a year later re-extract again so that was really one key question you also saw a lot of politics behind it that you have water companies that were deciding on their own position like they were always having a monopoly on fresh groundwater in the Netherlands as being the key user but because the government really wanted to stimulate renewable energies you see that shifting the biggest use of groundwater now is probably 8S systems in the Netherlands that have been stimulated so we saw some companies of the water companies were really putting a break on it and they were telling me as a researcher well you know whatever you do just come up with a report that tells me it's horrible and I can go into the authorities with that and other water companies were saying well hold on this may be a nice opportunity for us to diversify what we do and how we can sort of add value to our customers so I did that for about this and also did it part-time at the university so that's where I got my PhD on looking both at field sites and at laboratory experiments so the field site was quite interesting what we saw there it was at the site in Eindhoven and what we actually found out there was that the main effect is purely mixing of different water qualities and I've got a simulation here that showed that from that time I'll start playing so basically what it shows is a depth profile with concentrations in colors so shallow water was impacted from superficial processes and you had very high sulfate concentrations and deep ground water was really nice and good quality and had low sulfate concentrations and what happened is the system started being active it started extracting water from this stratified quality profile it mixed it up and then it injected it into the other well so you had these bubbles of sort of a mix of shallow water and deep water being mixed it blended up together different qualities and injected and you had these sort of perturbations in the water quality profile when is that well in this case the quality or concentrations circulated or fluctuated a bit they were still below the threshold values but it is now you could have other contaminants in that more shallow water that you could drag to greater depth where originally you had fresher or cleaner water but there is not really any temperature effect here which was also due to the fact that at this site they only increased it by 2 to 4 degrees so in later work I looked at what would happen if you would really go up to the higher temperatures for example 25 degrees centigrade which is the allowable level in the Netherlands at the moment and also 60 degrees because that was sort of opening up a new window of opportunities for other systems so I built a sort of a laboratory mini ATAS system with a lot of columns where you were flushing water through at different temperatures and then measured what would happen to that water quality so really interesting work it was nice to do something with my hands and you saw it with different impacts you saw an increase in mobility and trace elements you saw one more slide different microbiological populations coming up overall if you looked at the smaller temperature degrees there wasn't a whole big difference but if you really went up to 25 degrees and above you could see certain trace elements like arsenic were mobilized which could be a concern for water companies so summary and take-home message right on time I think I mean if you look at the sector that I'm working in now and how you work there as an hydrogeologist it will change a lot and that brings opportunities in all different times of ways cleaning up sites and developing new water resources for new projects and also in the renewables energies so I think as you start at the start of your career or if you stand at the start of your career there are huge opportunities to work in a wide variety of projects that will all take or require groundwater advice so that's it Thank you very much I also like to ask you so projects can be controversial pieces of evidence of irrelevance yeah so again there's time to ask questions and there's first students you have this blue cube it requires a professor to ask the first question and you're very polite to ask questions please we'll start from here you are saying simply about the renovation what about to avoid or to prevent the continuation well that's a very important point I mean in the Netherlands that's very well taken care of over here you have double lined tanks everywhere as good preventative measures so I think if you look at the trend in spills in well developed countries it's clearly going down on the other end in places like Nigeria it's indeed a completely different story where you're faced with a challenging environment with aging infrastructure and a very big security issue especially I mean the photos I showed a project where a spill occurred an operational spill so it was the fault of lacking maintenance but it took three months before the technicians could go to that spill because there had to be negotiations with the local communities to allow access to it so that's often a very big issue in those sort of countries I'm not involved in those discussions in my position but it's a continuous business balancing of interests like what do you do do you go out of a country like that or do you focus on other areas but even if they would go out of a country like that then another operator would pick it up and they would need to deal with it so it's very difficult there are efforts being undertaken to see if you can have better early warning systems for example so look at pressures and pipelines of drones flying over it because then you would avoid the security issue that you cannot inspect those pipelines but yeah you're right it's an enormously important topic to have prevention as the first element you've come face a lot of ethical issues in your work how do you deal with that yeah now it's true I mean it's well I mean it's both on the home front that you have to defend yourself all the time that's sort of an ethical issue of the work that you do and what type of company and also while working there you face sometimes ethical issues that I mean it can be for me it's often very demotivating if you look at a place like Nigeria and the work there and you're busy cleaning up a spill with all the security issues that are associated with it at the same time you hear that a project is being delayed because there has to be renegotiation again with the community to allow access so that's yeah how do you deal with that I just think well okay well yeah so it's indeed a continuing aspect and yeah those are I think the more softer ethical issues I mean if you there's also the real corruption issues that you hear on the news there's a court case ongoing in Italy now yeah how do you deal with that if you encounter really things like that yeah you're stimulated by the company to go up to your line manager and raise the flags on that I mean that's the really things like if you see somebody giving a job to their brother or those sort of things which are I haven't seen it myself but what you do here there's quite a strong handle on that to try and root that out but it's also difficult because it's seems to be very much ingrained in operational culture sometimes another question by the students thank you one more I'll answer on the legal side the remediation technique that you said with land farming wasn't it a big scale is it a lot in Nigeria do you use the soil again yeah both yes yeah yeah that's not really a legal question it's just the the criteria set by concentrations which you need to achieve so that's the sort of regulatory framework and it's they've taken over the legislation from the Netherlands in essence the soil legislation so you need to demonstrate that you when you remediate it you go below intervention values and the way how you do it so you can take some liberty in that yourself but land farming is especially in that climate because it's so hot and moist it just works really well and hydrocarbons degrade quite well so it's by far the most effective way can you reuse it yes I mean there's no in essence it's better to reuse it then to put it in an incinerator or something like that because then the environmental impact of that would be not so good so maybe some final question by one of the professors so people you are about to ask okay thanks a lot thanks very much actually I have a question on how many of you are out there in a way that for instance in Nigeria you have a colleague also from Shell in the water sector or environment sector if you wish so you connect or is it more kind of centralized well each business so that they are more online businesses they have often environmental people as well most of the time they are quite generalist so they will deal with air quality issues then with water permits or discharge permits and sort of groundwater issues and then they are coming to us in the team in Rijswijk for more specialist advice on sort of groundwater issues and each of these assets has that and the centralized group is about 30 people globally this is about it because we have two young people to move on and I thank Matta very much for this very interesting talk I hope you can say for another event but immediately follow it okay well that's good for the rest of the day thank you for this again I don't know but there is a secret that's never really solved before it happens we have a break there's a break okay so we discussed about this interlude of students and everyone in Groundwatch performing talent decided they didn't really have time to prepare or were not feeling like performing for an audience below 2,000 people they are very talented so they just asked me yeah they charged they don't do it for free anymore so decided to put in front someone without any talent other than right corny things so I'll try my best not to bore you too much so first I want to thank everyone who is here thank Arno and Matias for such nice talk very informative expect my CV in and also obviously thanks to our professors you've guided us educated us in a lot of ways also I think the moral and effective guidance has been very important and so yesterday I started feeling a little nervous and excited just as I feel before Christmas and all my family will come over and we will sit down and tell stories and eat too much food and make a lot of noise see each other and be reminded of all the things that we have in common and I guess this is exactly the same thing my family has come from all over Europe so you guys to eat too much make a lot of noise so more than two years ago all of us were packing our lives in one or two suitcases the favorite shirt or sari or dress or glitter for that special occasion the many pullovers mom recommended to carry because you never know pictures sizes, postcards, figurines and everything that could fit in a bag and remind us of home that place we would have to say goodbye for more than two that place we had to say goodbye more than two years ago some of us leaving our parents house for the first time others walking away from a life they had built so that we could all search a great perhaps a new life a new me, a new you then we arrived this is our country with bright colors and sad music I remember very well our first meetings asking the countries the food types and the jokes where we all came from telling each other why we were so interested in this groundwater and what we were expecting of this master and shyly but surely getting to know this group of international and mysterious strangers the next scene has a bunch of us talking about everything and nothing as we speed out of Obidosh on our way to an ancient burial site where we lie down on giant rocks to see the stars that afternoon we watched the falling leaves carried by a sunset wind through the hills as those leaves the days fell one after the other piling up on what became the lives surrounded by each other an accumulation of talks over lunch and also projects nights outing listen to just sunsets projects dinners projects by roalto lovely walks projects and of course birthday cakes until one day we had to pack everything in one or two or sometimes three suitcases but this time we were not leaving everything behind that group of mysterious strangers were now friends teachers, therapists, healers accomplices, partners we left the city behind but we took with us home in doubt some of us understood why it was a big deal about spring in Europe the charm of late days techniques and the heartbreak of having to describe the read of sequence of sewage leaching in the library during the last sunny day of the week being near in Erasmus master together made us close and I could say friends but living together in a tiny van doing mobile laundry and titrating well samples at night made us a family we survived a flood and we survived assignments once again and then for a third time in a year we left the life we had in one city to start a new one in a new place taking the train to Tadham Forest became a ritual rushing to the station finding ground watchers inside the train chatting over the last weekend laughing at the latest story starting on someone's study project enjoying the transition of the city into the forest of autumn into winter the green to yellow to red to branches to white Dresden had two big challenges winter and the first time we didn't see each other all day every day with some noisest blue vine and free trams we managed to appease both part of growing up in every family means that some people move out some others change their schedules drift a little bit apart for sure one thing remains they will share plenty pictures on the whatsapp group and so after moving for a four time in two years we kept in touch even being in different cities in several continents bonded by the task of thesis shared history and deep caring for each other we were all connected by underground wires in a delicate network trouble in Delft was heard in Central America and Indian Portugal would come to the rescue cheap chat would travel on every Thursday boss from Dresden to Delft and back mutual support and interventions to take us out of libraries and into bars kept a lot of us applaud some of us had a rougher time than others but thesis was an intense journey that wouldn't have been the same without the steering team of qualified young researchers backing us all up if this ceremony is a climax then it is built over 24 months of weaving a thread that speaks more than 25 languages then can cook the most delicious meals you will ever know and is a caring network that shelters guys the training of you understand this life changing your journey more than anyone could ever I can only say that I am eternally grateful to all of you you have become my family I can only wish you the very best life you could possibly live of course I am happy I have made great contacts with future renown scientists dynamic entrepreneurs and high degree decision makers but I am happier I will get to know about your daily mischiefs and sentimental updates these threads that connect us will stretch around the world for years and years and I am not asking I am telling you we will keep in touch dear participants friends and family good afternoon it is my pleasure to welcome you to the graduation day of the irasen smolens master programs in flood risk management and groundwater and global change impact and adoption also known as ground watch we start with some opening speeches by the rector and representatives of our park and university followed by the award ceremony and I will give the floor to our rector so good afternoon nice to see you all here I think it is a very special day and I think especially not for the first row but especially the rows behind the first row I think after today I think you are going into a new face in your life a new face especially in your professional career and we hope that with what you have been hearing about I hope you remember something of what you heard here and that you will take that home with you and that you will use it as well and I think first of all it is something that is important for yourself but I also think it is very important for your family for your friends and I think also for us here as IG staff but also I think for all the people that have contributed to that I would like to welcome especially Professor Christian Bernhofer from Dresden University of Technology in Germany so thanks very much for coming Professor Alan Bateman from the Technical University of Catalonia in Spain so very welcome Professor Micha Brili from the University of Lugiana in Slovenia very welcome and Professor Luis Ribera University of Lisbon in Portugal also from the University of Lisbon in Portugal and I think already with the names of the different places and universities that I mentioned it also shows I think the specialty of this program that you were working in I personally think it is something that I envy you about a little bit that you had the opportunity to work and sit at different universities and see all those difference not only because the different locations and the different advisors and staff that you met there but also because you had the opportunity to meet one another and also to talk one another and I hope that this will be a bond that you will keep for the rest of your life and I hope that you will do the same also for the water sector of which we are I think one of all very proud but we also see big need for people like yourself to contribute and to improve actually how we use the water resources that we have available on the group so with that I would like to give the foreback to the video and I hope that we can hand out Now we first have some speeches and I would like to invite Mishwa to say a few words We are graduating students and the family members colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen Today is a special day some of our students are graduating it's not only special for you it's also very special for us we are always proud when we see our students graduate I take this opportunity to congratulate you and I'm sure that you will use your new knowledge and the diploma which comes with the knowledge that as a weapon of the world If you think that all your challenges are over I think very soon you will be understood that it's a mistake the real challenges are waiting for you when you enter the professional world and then every day you have a new assignment to submit yes to your first year boss to your clients and to what not Today is also the graduation of the 7th batch of flood discipline students we don't have a large number of them today but in about 10 days a much big group is joining the program 30 students with 28 scholarship holders and about 10 cell peers so very soon this room will be filled up also with new batches of ground watch and another program in method the graduates of flood discipline over the years they have named themselves floodies so we have about I think about 120 floodies in last 6 years maybe 115 and they are dealing with floods global flooding issues around the world and floods are fortunately unfortunately everywhere so that keep our graduates busy and today some of our graduates will be joining this group and I think over the years we have formed a family of floodies we are growing I am very happy to announce that the European Commission has given us grant, new grant extension for the continuation of this program so this program will continue for some more years together with also ground watch so in the future you will see that more students are coming I will take this opportunity to thank also the European Commission for giving us grant and keeping trust on our program and I think our floodies as the need and this new funding will keep supply of floodies and I don't know how the ground watch graduates you call yourself groundies or something ground watches so the floodies and ground watches they will be significantly contribute to solving global water problems I take this opportunity once again to congratulate you for your graduation thank you to invite Professor Christian Berthold for his Thank you very much students, graduates, colleagues it's about what you are going to be today so from a student for graduate becoming a colleague I would like to speak here on behalf of Field Ressen a little story before but 25 years ago things started 15 years about ago that the relationship to IG started in Biswa that were both present in a new project called flood site and then there was the idea to develop from the course that we started together the whole program and then IG stepped in to do it so it's also about collaboration, cooperation with IG that we are celebrating here today but mostly we are celebrating you as the students and there as Biswa already mentioned there are 120 almost flood risk students almost 60 students of ground water study specifically and I want to highlight the amount of collaboration that's included with this and cooperation there was the cooperation between the institutions cooperation between you there have been many highlights in your study and mostly today it's crowd watchers that I just learned that you yourself called yourself ground watchers I was aware about the flood and I think I think it starts always with traveling and you recall these things first time I always meet the students during the field class and I appreciate very much that this is an intensive way to get acquainted to each other when you do something together it's always very helpful because you share your problems you share your abilities and you share also your prospects and that's something that will help you in the future and cooperation in the world that becomes more and more complicated more and more demanding to keep cooperation alive so I think you will be maybe the agents of change or maybe also sometimes the agents of happening that there shouldn't be too much change in the cooperating world because at the moment I have sometimes the fear that the amount of non-corporations you have a good training also to understand that not only water is a binding material also other things are binding materials that will help you to overcome certain problems that you face in a growing world with growing problems so there's one thing I always say at these occasions and this is also about cooperation this is an African pro-work that says if you want to travel fast you have to travel alone but if you want to travel far you have to travel together so have a good duration and have a good life as a master of water Hi Professor really from Indiana University thank you very much for this opportunity because it is a great day not only for you but also for us give us an all knowing that we do a good job I hope give you some knowledge and on one side on the other side it was also a challenge to have so smart students in the classroom and it is also some great great feeling doing video for sure I know that you will make a well and good career what I would like to ask you please stay together connected in the future during your study because it is really challenge to spend the time on different situation almost two years and it is something which give you possibility and challenge and development which is not so strong related in the other classroom and other students it is really challenge thank you I would now like to invite Professor Ellen Bacon good afternoon Professor good afternoon Grandes and Thais I can speak mathematics and physics but make a speech like this is very difficult to me I write something to you to the students have to use my glasses everything you make do it with passion see you are years old and I am fan of the Beatles I have to read some sentence refer about Beatles do it better all the time of course you have to do it everyday of your life life is what happen to you when you are busy making other plans life flow like a river and drag you you have to be prepared all the best for you thank you very much we now proceed with the part you have all been waiting for the actual awarding of the diploma we start with surface management the ones from Brownport need to have just a little bit more patience I first ask our rector and Professor Brini to take our position there so that the photographer can also make a nice picture and join them of course for Mr. Javier from Spain Mr. Lin Chin Chi from Taiwan some people on the stage Professor Brini and Professor Bacon thank you take a seat at the fondre and I would like to call Professor Lugievo and Professor Grayley Neewer to the stage Professor Neewer may I call upon you to say a few words thank you good afternoon everybody in particular the graduates we are now holding up let me give you a little bit of a personal reflection on ground water it's a bit a bit of a a bit of a personal reflection on ground water it's a bit of a sweet for me because when I'm at home in South Africa I'm one of the missing numbers in the JMP data that could fail dealt with in his master's thesis I use a borehole it's sweet for me because it's artesian 800 litres an hour very nice it's bitter because it's fluoride very high fluoride and we can't really use it except in times of drought when it has a really really high value and we can do something with it expensively but what it really highlights is that often ground water is undervalued I think you guys are starting to realise that and we don't see its value all that often now next week I'm actually going to workshop at the world water development for the world water development report in 2021 which is on valuing water now those world water development reports are quite important because what they do is they set the agenda for the world water days every year and the world water days are rolled out internationally and they also the theme at the Stockholm World Water Week and I think someone attended the world water week from the ground up to there so 2021 the theme will be valuing water but importantly for you guys in 2022 thanks to a lot of logging by people like Naena and others the theme is groundwater making the invisible visible so something to look forward to in 2022 so I think that really highlights the importance of the field and the relevance of ground watch for the work that you've done but what I wanted to do was just acknowledge the vision of the organisers of ground watch the guys who started the program well I guess we're sitting in the front row here for recognising the importance of a program like this getting it up and running obviously ground watch is important for groundwater but the program I think you've heard today it's multi-national it's multi-cultural it deals with issues of life as well as the technical aspects that you've been exposed to so really it is a program for our time so I want to salute all the staff involved the guys who got it going but also to acknowledge the lecturers across the institutions the mentors who really spent huge amounts of time working with you on your dissertations the time and effort that goes into that I think is also somewhat invisible at times and I think I'd also just like to note the efforts of the other IHE staff who've worked in the background to make a ceremony like this happen there's a lot of work that goes into the program that we don't always see so to the students I think you've been exposed to a program that is really relevant for our times you've had a unique opportunity and from what I've heard from the discussions this morning the feedback you really made the most of that to get to know each other and learn more than just about groundwater to build a community and you know I'm barking on a career you've got a really good grounding technically but the network that you've built is really going to be a foundation for going forward and I think with the tools that we have today those networks are easy to maintain and it really is critical that you build those networks just about amongst yourselves but with your mentors and other people you've been exposed to it's the start of a really strong career so in essence your diploma which you will receive shortly is more than just a piece of paper there's been far more to it than that so my congratulations to all of you thank you very much hello all here we are the day of the graduation of the third bachelor of groundwater third generation so it's already running for quite some time it's amazing how time flies of course when you're having fun groundwater is actually known in the full word as groundwater and global change impacts and adaptation so of course during this course Graham said that already you learn to make the invisible and of course groundwater is a new resource and therefore often under evaluated but it's of course vital as a freshwater resource for the increasing for increasing food and water security of course for the billions of people and the growing population but we also see of course groundwater as a major role player in for instance attaining sustainable development goals we see that it's also threatened of course exploitation over exploitation of contamination of course we are using water as we need it but we need to protect it for its value that it has so their third generation groundwater from today onwards you will be able to call yourself certified groundwater but with great knowledge comes great responsibility it will be your responsibility to increase the visibility of groundwater and to raise awareness about the need to protect this resilience but at the same time very sensitive resource and of course to help find solutions for adaptation to these global and climatic changes wherever you'll be throughout your future careers be it in academia NGOs, public or private sectors use your skills wisely be ambassadors of the program accept the challenge to transfer your knowledge and share experiences with others and what now seems perhaps obvious to you may often be a revelation to others so again making it visible visible because we need all the help we can get keep on going and don't give up even when the situation is sometimes become frustrated as you have to experience to a certain extent in the past the same month and a half be optimistic be realistic but especially be optimistic and I'm sure you will succeed I have accompanied you on your journey over the past two years I've come to know you a bit I've listened to your stories seen you evolve felt your commitment felt your determination even in these moments of stress or doubt wondering whether you're going to finish analyzing those results completing those graphics models or writing the thesis let alone defend it in front of a community but that's all over now so it's time to pick up your reward next Monday actually the fifth generation of ground which will start their journey followed in your footsteps we will need to commemorate that fifth graduation even more and I really look forward to that day and I will invite you all of course to join I'm happy and grateful to be continuing this journey with all my colleagues especially Teresa, Luis, Christian but also all the others who are involved today is your day so you did very well and I'm proud I also invite Professor Lugiero and please come to the university thank you for all ground watchers I have some words in the topic of ground water the nature-based solution for the future the management of water resources requires solutions to counteract the growing challenge of water scarcity arising from population growth and climate change today more than ever you must work with nature rather than against it the great challenge is to take full advantage of natural potential contribute to the achievement of the three main objectives of water management increase the availability of water resources improve the quality and reduce water-related risks ground water and aquifer-related natural-based solutions hold major unrealized potential for alleviating adverse impacts of both sluice and droughts in the same region of basin and impacts of progressive climate change overall aquifer-centric natural-based solutions such as large-scale managed aquifer recharge interventions may be applied to certain physiographic conditions to alleviate the risks of both sluice and droughts in the same river basins the solution is found in the past revisiting visiting ground water ancestral wisdom and techniques all these civilizations have developed ingenious natural-based solutions to adapt to extreme climatic scenarios such as longer droughts managing water resources in a holistic way and all they understood clearly the global water cycle in all the components specifically ground water one of the possible approaches are found in the trilogy to sell, to retain to collect water by implementing ancestral aquifer recharge solutions to retain water by improving aerobic infusions in terms of infiltration and drainage and finally to collect water by improving the performance of extraction in the subraniac roots in some other regions there are many examples of symbios between map and environment for instance, during the colonial times in Peru thousands of hectares of Kenua were cut down to make bridge roofs mines as well as tillage roofs tillage tools even today the business burned the tips to force down to germinate fresh and juice pastures with the water to feed the cattle it is not known that Kenua roots and their formidable stems intervene in the water cycles and that drops in regions where streams used to run af to do with a progressive disappearance nowadays there is more and more a growing need to recognize the cosmogonic and spiritual representations of indigenous societies around water and their possible contributions to a more balanced vision for the use and conservation in this sense although the western and indigenous conceptions of water resources can cause conflicts they can be a factor of complementary and cooperation that feeds the pages for a sustainable development it is a great pleasure to see groundwater network increase by year in terms of countries case studies, affections friendships and cultures I am very pleased to be part of this project it was and has been a wonderful experience since EIG Delft and TUG for the collaboration many many thanks to the new graduate master of science I desire a great success for your professional or academic papers we will be missing you Thank you I will kindly proceed with awarding of the diplomas of the Gorgon masters I would first call on Professor Peddi Professor Professor Professor Professor We would like to stress that this diploma is a unique issue, handle it with care. In case of loss, I actually cannot give you a new one, the institution does not hold copies of your review. Be there for strongly advice you to make a photocopy and a PDF of your diploma and a diploma supplement specifically. Now I give the floor to our rector, Professor Adidas. Thank you very much and first of all congratulations to all of you. I think you did a very good job and I hope that also referred to the words that were spoken to you by the different professors that were guiding you that you will take them with you and that you use them well. I think on the serious side there we do expect that you now got a lot of I think authority also in the water world but that authority also comes with some obligations and one of them is that you are also expected to work following the code of conduct for the different universities. I'm sure you will do that but I think it's so good to stress that that's important and I think that one of the things I hope that you also will take with you besides a lot of knowledge is also how you work together and I think I again would like to thank our partners actually that also made it possible to offer you this course here so thanks very much for that and I think that also when I was listening to the different speakers we now have a flood is in the room here. We have certified ground waters here. I think you also now have a tune. You have to still find out which tune of the Beatles it is but I hope you will sing that somewhere tonight. Maybe you can ask some guidance on which tune to sing but I'm curious to hear that later on. I also think that with the diploma that you got today you also have become a member of the alumni family of IG and for us at IG it's very important that this family grows because we see urgent needs in a larger family working at the water sector. For us and I think I'm also talking for our partner universities also very important to keep in contact with you because we also learn a lot from you and when you work in the field and you encounter new problems and we're sure that you will encounter new problems that you haven't encountered before. We are very interested to learn about it as well not only because we're interested to adjust the program that we're offering our new students but also that we think that in some cases maybe we can be of help and maybe we can look at collaboration and that we can do to see how we can tackle those new issues that will come up. It was already mentioned that in two years time what today will be about invisible water so that's especially about groundwater and I think that looking at some of the changes that you see here I know that both the governments of Germany and the governments of Sweden are now thinking about introducing irrigation and that is because we have those droughts. A big question of course is where will we get water from? One of the possible water sources will be the surface water reservoirs but the other one will be groundwater and I think that in some of the water you're coming from there's much more expertise on that than in these countries so I think it's not a one-way knowledge transfer but I really believe in this two-way knowledge transfer so I do hope that you will also provide your knowledge to us as partners. With that I would like to first of all invite everybody for a reception downstairs in our restaurant but before we do that I would also like to invite you and I'm not talking about the students and all the lecturers to take a picture downstairs at the entrance of the building. So I hand over actually the organization to Vilo again who will guide us in whose going where. Thank you. Please come downstairs. Maria.