 Distinguished guests, including our great friends from the rotary, Meet the Dutch coordinators and volunteers, colleagues, and last but not least, our new batch of MSc students. My name is Charlotte de Fatule, I'm the vice-rector of IGDO, and I'm the sponsor of the Academic Affairs. It's my pleasure to wish you all of you a very warm welcome to this annual event to mark the start of the new academic year. We have a very full house, which is, I think nearly all the seats are actually taken, so it's a very good sign. So today we are gathered here to welcome 162 new students, which is quite a tiny number, coming from 46 different countries. So to you new students, most of you, you arrived less than a week ago on Sunday. For some of you, or for many of you, it might be the first time in Europe, and I'm very pleased that you choose to come to IGDO to do your monsters. Welcome to IGDO. I would like to extend a very special welcome to those representing the embassies of the countries of our students originally. So 27 embassies are represented here today. I'm very happy that you could take the time for your busy schedule to share this special moment with us here at IGDO. For you new students, this event marks the official start of an exciting journey here in Delft, which hopefully will lead to you earning an MC degree in April 2021. Over the past few days, you have started to settle in, and everything is of course still new and exciting, maybe except for the weather. But be assured that staff at IGDO will do their utmost best to make you feel welcome and at home, and ensure that you can take the maximum benefit of your stay here in Delft. You have the unique opportunity of not only learning about water and benefiting from the wealth of water knowledge here at IGDO and in Delft and in the Netherlands, but you will also be learning about other cultures and doing things that are outside of your comfort zone and hopefully to grow as a person as a result. We are a small institute and compared to the larger institutes, our staff student ratio is relatively high. That means that we can give a personal touch to our educational program. You will get to know the teaching staff, not only in the classroom, and the sports staff, not only in the classroom, but also not only at the reception or the IT help desk, but also in the mentee, at lunchtime, in the corridor, and you will have the opportunity to interact outside of the classroom as well at social and sports events. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight one of the unique features of this institute, which I am very proud of. Of course, most of you know as the institute is water education, and of course, which we are. We are an institute for water and education, and we are also proud to be the largest international graduate of water education facilities in the world. We are proud, of course, of our achievement of our alumni who are making an impact on water challenges in their functions, and later we will have an excellent example of that. But we should be at least as proud of our diversity. That is diversity in disciplines, diversity in nationalities and cultures. Addressing complex water challenges requires looking at them from different angles, from different perspectives and listening to different people. An ecologist has a different perspective on what intelligence can say, social scientists or engineers, and they differ again from water technologists, biologists, chemists. We usually attend talks or conferences in our own specialization. And actually, quite often we hear the things that we already know, or more or less know. So I would like to encourage you strongly to attend lunch seminars, guest lectures, and other, and choose electives in modules, electives in topics, others than in your own specialization, outside of your own specialization. You may learn something new and unexpected that may enrich your specialization. There are many examples of innovation that are triggered by combining different disciplines. So I hope you take this unique opportunity to benefit from this richness of disciplines here at ISU. But our diversity is actually much more than just a broad range of water disciplines and professional backgrounds. As said, today we welcome new students from 46 countries. And the total student and alumni population spans actually 190 countries, 190 countries. This building is probably one of the few places in the world with so high number of different nationalities and cultures with square music. Make use of it. I think I can easily say that. But make use of it. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Celebrate this diversity. It is, of course, tempting to stick together as a group of students from your own country. You speak the same language, you have the same culture. And of course, that's important when you're settling in a new environment. However, I would like to encourage you, while you have this unique opportunity to connect with others from different countries and cultures, forge new friendships with those from other countries. During classes, but also during lunch, coffee breaks, in the canteen, group exercises, or even while walking inside the home. Because an international network of water professionals is probably one of the most precious assets that you can gain from studying here at ISU. So, new students, I wish you a very fruitful and enjoyable time here at ISU. I would like now to invite Dr. Johanna Popescu to the stage. Dr. Popescu is Associate Professor in Hydroinformatics. She's not only established research in this field, but she's an excellent teacher and she happened also to be an alumni from ISU. She will now share some of her professional experience and insights. The title of her presentation is Water-Aid in our Publics. So please, Johanna, the stage is yours. Our excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues, and students, I'm going to talk about health that would have been our focus and how can some of us use it in our daily work. But first, let me show you, as it was already mentioned, that you are coming from all over the world to study in a new country. And this is your first day of study. And when one would come to study in a new country, what would you do first? You would buy something like you do at home, like food or a new subscription to the phone or clothes. But you will also need to do things that are specific to this country, and it was already mentioned. You will need to buy and buy, and you definitely need an umbrella. We have seen that. People are getting the dates that help us. And I have decided to talk about the phone and how can phone help professionals in their work in water. But first, let's see what you will use and you know already what you are using the phone for in your daily work. So you will talk home because you will miss home. You will do a lot of photos wherever you go. You will buy things, even tickets to go back and visit your family. But mostly you will talk with your friends and with your colleagues and you will share the whiteboard and the formulas on the whiteboard. And you will always check if in the next half an hour you will be playing or not. In water, it is also a very good support because we can collect data. We can see what is available. We can see the water quality data and we can measure land use, water levels, water velocities. And this is what I'm going to talk with you. And before going there, let's look a bit on what type of instruments are there to collect data. And traditionally they are expensive and they are very good but expensive. And if citizens get the chance to help all the scientists, the policy makers and the decision makers by collecting data with their own phone. And this is called crowdsourced. You will see many other names, mainly things like that. It's simple. It's data abundant. It's low cost by complementing, of course, it's low cost only if you don't lose your phone during these events. And it creates awareness with the citizens. When I talk about awareness, I'm also referring to the fact that we all know that we have sustainable development goals where we do want to take care about the planet and to have a better life for the inhabitants of the planet. And that translates into the 17 sustainable development goals to which citizens would not only be aware but they will also contribute to the measurement of the indicators and to make it better. On the other hand, there are several staff members that are working with phone technologies in their research. And these are the staff members that are working with the MSc students and the Ph.D. fellows that are using it in studies, in projects and we even included in one of the modules in the curriculum. We started relatively new in 2005 when there were only mobile phones here with device services, with SMSs. And as technology evolved in 2008, there was a peak of mobile phones used, then it evolved even more and then smart phones started to be used. And so did our projects. They evolved and they were using technologies in the studies. I'm in particular going to talk with you about four of the projects that were implemented and research and with more emphasis on the last one, which is fairly new. So two of my colleagues looked at measuring water levels and if we can prove that water levels can be measured and shown to professionals. So there were several gorges in Delft and they were mapped on the map and the citizens could send SMS messages that were recorded. And then whenever you would click on one of these gorges, you can see what is the water level in it now. And it had the advantage that you can do that on the field or in the office. And that was in 2008. Later on in 2015, the aim was to map the extent of rainfall by also using the information sent by citizens. And how can this be done by in laboratory recording videos of a rainfall event and these are the results of recording video. And then these were available on an app on a mobile phone. And a citizen going in the field will send its location, his or her location, and then it will also map it to which one of the videos it looks and if there is enough participation, everyone could see what is the extent of the rainfall event. And then later on, two colleagues were looking on and developing applications on the mobile phone for collecting precipitation, evaporation and water levels on Mara Serengeti. And they are also the data was sent to a server and then wherever data was available, a user can look at what is available, can see the rainfall, can see the water level and how these can be used. They can inform professionals on using it for water adaptation planning and for looking at environmental flow. And further, later on, we were using the mobile phones to look at the decision support and to how models which incorporate data coming from citizens can be expert advice to decision makers. The decision professionals will build a model that will show what is the situation in the field, especially with focus on floods and floods are a lot of data demanding models. And they will put a lot of data in the model, but also they will need the input for the citizen to check certain situation in the field. And I will be more specific when I will give you the examples. I want to tell you how that citizens become the eye of the policy makers for specific applications were developed in the project for the citizens to go in groups and to measure data related to water depth, water velocity and also land use that I will focus on on these two. And three of them were specifically for citizens to explore to measure and collaborate and one was for authorities who were launching these campaigns and asking the citizens to come and to give data to check what they are doing. Two case studies were selected to prove the concept and one is rural wetland area in Romania, which is the area where there is a lot of intricate network of canals where flood it's actually not a hazard it's a service for the fauna and flora that it is in that area. And the second case study is very close to the city of Athens increase where it is highly or urbanized and floods are a problem. And what has been done is I will take each case one by one the first case then delta the professionals and our PhD students were looking at the model that will show based on classical existing data, what is happening there and then identify where are places where there is not a stagnation, which is not good, where there are velocities or where are not connected. And based on that authorities will call for the citizens to go on the field and to measure inside the field what is happening, and then coming back and see if this is what is really happening, but also testing is truly a citizen with a phone and help this work. A model has been built that was showing all the flow of the water in the delta and then specific paths that citizens will follow and points where water level and water velocity is measured what the time and our champion is here. All the students, which is also in the room with you, all the citizens could select themselves what they want to measure velocity or water level. And this is not an easy task. They were going in boats and staying in the boat six to eight hours. It's not easy something very much committed to health and to see what is happening there. As soon as a point of interest is reached, then the two boats, one on the left bank and one on the right bank or was or stopping, then coaches were put in the water and the tennis ball was thrown in order to measure the velocity. We were collecting that tennis ball, we were not letting them in the water. Let me show you a bit how the results are. There are many good results, but when you grow with a lot of people in the field, there are many bad results, not because the citizens do not want to collect good data, but because there are birds that are very nice to them and they are better to make a photo of a bird rather than of the gorge. In the meantime, they learned that it is better to pay attention and to make good photos. When we talk about velocities, the ball is thrown in the water, then a video is made and certain parameters of the velocity at the surface of the water is determined. Here also the citizens were so enthusiastic that sometimes instead of standing still and making the video, they were moving together with a phone as the ball was moving, but there is always room for improvement. How is this data used? Just to show you how is this data used, then inside all the data that was collected by the citizens in order to prove the concept, we also measured with traditional data what is happening in the field. And we could say that citizens can prove that there are places where all the data is correct and the model can be used as it is, but there are also places where the geometry of the regret has to be changed. And that is potentially a good thing. If I now go to the city of Athens, I will show you a totally different application where citizens were taking side photos at the river on the river banks and many from one position taking many side photos and then repeating the cycle many times. And this is our master's student who did and developed an algorithm from these side photos to determine the cross section of the river. I have selected three cross sections to show you because it's a proof of concept that with this green dot of nine, you can actually show that the cross section of the river was determined in a correct way and there is potential to go and determine an irregular cross section of the river. Now, that is just a glimpse of what we are doing and we are working, but what I would like to take with you is that technology is there to help us in our work. And it also involves, we should not stick with one technology, we should be flexible to adapt because as technology involves, so does our ability to involve others and to do more. So we open to learn something new always. Then let me travel with you forward in time to your last day as you have heard, I also have been a student many, many years back as I stated the auditorium and listen to the lectures and I can tell you few things from that perspective, I can share you some things from that perspective. A few weeks back, I was visiting a wonder of engineering work in water, the Panama Canal, and there at the Panama Canal which keeps the world united as Panamanians are saying and they are right. There is a photo of all the people who contributed to the realization of the canal. These people, the photo is from more than 100 years ago and all those are rightfully called canal heroes. But I want to show you that while I was reading, I was thinking that only a few words can be changed and it will fit perfectly to IHE alumni. So IHE alumni came from all over the, from many different places to learn to build their future that will benefit hopefully the world. And they made friends for life and they could use what they have learned to contribute and exalt the country a day of return. But what I want you to take very much and it was already stressed here is that they came from different parts of the world, they spoke different languages, but they all managed to understand each other. And this is what you will see that it is happening here when you will do your life. Will it be difficult in the year, in the months to come with a lot of work? Yes, it will be difficult. But I advise you every now and then to make a break, go to see a museum, go to take a walk, even if it is raining very much. It will help you in your studies. Will you make friends for life? As it was said, yes, you will make friends for life. Not only that you will make friends for life, you will learn so much about other countries that you never knew. And you will be surprised to discover things about your own country that you took for granted. But you will present it to your friends and then you will see how wonderful it is. You will see other culture. Most of all, what you will see is that everyone in the world is the same. They all have hope. They all came here to learn. They all miss home. They all like music. So this is why you will make friends with them. When you will go back home, because you have these friends, maybe you will manage better water, because you will see what is happening to the others. Will you be a better water professional? That's for you, for each one of you to answer this question. But I can tell you what the ones graduating this year in April were saying about the water. They were saying that water should be addressed from different perspectives, as it was also mentioned before. So that's very good. And it does not have border. And how can we address that through cooperation in an interdisciplinary approach? So you should not leave anyone out. You should look at the policy makers, at the decision makers, at engineers, at all aspects in water. And the last question is when you go back home, will you miss IG? Well, I did a bit of a search in the social media to see if you will miss or not IG. Yes, you will miss it. You even might consider to give to your kids the name that's the answer. So you will miss it. And this is what I wanted to talk with you about. Welcome, Natalia Chidals, and enjoy your studies. We're sharing these really nice perspectives and also in your own time as an alumni here that long time ago. But I'm also looking very different now to tennis balls and my phone. I've seen very different uses of it now. So now it's time for a musical interlude. And it is my pleasure to introduce a very special musical interlude performed by two talented musicians who also happen to be MSc students here. Please, a warm applause for two of our senior MSc participants. Danielle Kausen from Temeja and Maxime Wells from Granada. Well, really, yeah. From Temeja and Maxime from Granada. Hearing from the reactions, I think everybody did enjoy this interlude. Now, last year they were sitting here, probably, like you, new students. So I'm just going to make sure you're wondering who will perform here next year. I heard already some singing, so maybe no pressure. I would like to invite Maria Laura, the alumni officer, and she will introduce the Alumni Award and the women. Should I sing or should I talk to you? So, distinguished guests, alumni that are following this ceremony live, colleagues and, of course, all the students. But I would like to congratulate all new students from the commencement of the study at IHEL. No? Yes. But today, apart from the opening of the academic year, it's a special day because we celebrate the alumni day. And why? Because many professionals have started their studies at IHEL, at UNESCO IHEL, at IHEL, like you, one day in October. And many, also with a walk-in tour and a boat trip. And this moment. I think that you have heard in the days that it has more than 23,000 alumni worldwide. And they form the biggest water professional network in the world. They are, many know about that. Our best ambassadors, even though I get to know today that we have an student that has a father that is an alumnus. You are not the first one. In this ceremony, we have the pleasure of awarding one of our exceptional alumnus that will receive the 7th IHEL Alumni Award. The award is given annually to an alumna or an alumnus who has proven to be a role model for other water professionals. 27 nominations were received this year. And the two members were very impressed over here with the overall quality of the work and their proposals. Three alumni made up a very strong show list, and they were Dr. Rose Kawa from Uganda. Mr. Masum Handar from Afghanistan, also former staff member of the U.S. School. And Mr. Bondimu Teklesiko from Ethiopia. Congratulations to all of them. And now I would like to give the word to our Vice Rector to announce the Alumni Award of this year. It's my pleasure to announce the winner. And that is Professor Alvaro Carnavas. So congratulations. It's also my honor to deliver the Laudatio and explain a little bit on why you received this award. Professor Alvaro Carnavas is from Mozambique. I would like to highlight some of his achievements and explain why he is really the deserveer winner of the Alxin Alumni Award. Which, as Maria Lauer already explained, is given to every year to I.G. Alumni who made a lasting impact on the water sector. Well, I mean, as I said, I was looking at the long list of achievements and where shall I start, actually. Out of this long list, I would like to pick and emphasize the achievements to highlight what Professor Carnavas has done to share his knowledge and support his own generation of water professionals in Mozambique. After graduating from I.G. in River Engineering in 1981, and obtaining his PhD in Hydrology and Water Resources in Portugal, he has had a low distinguished academic career at Eduardo Modela University where he created a master degree in Hydrology and Water Resources. At the same time, he was, I don't know how you can do that at the same time, but he did that at the same time, he was also a founding partner of Consultate. And that's a leading consultancy firm in Mozambique. And both at the university, involved at the Consultate, he worked with and he stimulated young graduates to become better professionals. And also to continue on some postgraduate studies. He's also the founding, again, also, he's also the founding member of AquaShare, a Mozambique Association of Water Professionals, which is also very active in working with young professionals and promoting their international contacts and the experience. In his position as head, sorry. In his position as head of department and dean at the university, Eduardo Mondana University, he sent his best junior staff to I.G. for their master degree. And some of them are now themselves associate or assistant professors at the university. Others are working elsewhere in the water sector, in the private sector or public sector. He also sent his young, the young bright graduates from the National Water and Directorate to pursue their masters at I.G. So we are very grateful for all the bright master students we received from Mozambique. And after which also they also obtained key positions in the water sector. His students and young people he worked with during the long career are now working all over Mozambique and beyond. Some of them in positions of right responsibility. And they all refer to him with great respect and affection. Professor Carmel once has worked extensively on shared international databases. He also wrote a textbook on hydrology and water resources used in universities in Mozambique, Angola, Portugal and other Portuguese speaking countries. The only reason that we are not using it because it's in Portuguese. This is only a very small sample of the impressive list of achievements of Professor Carmel. There is really no doubt that he is one of the most visionary and most professional water experts in Southern Africa, in South Africa and the region. And absolutely the worthy winner of the Alumni Award of 2019. Furthermore, after Mozambique experienced the largest plot on record following two tropical cyclones that recently hit the country. It's a perfect occasion to honor one of the most prominent water scientists of Mozambique with the IIT Alumni Award. Professor Carmel Novas, I would like to remind you will also deliver a lunchtime seminar tomorrow. So you are all invited to do that lunch seminar. But for now I would like to invite Johan and of course Professor Carmel Vas to the stage. I would like to invite the Vice-Fractor of IHG, Professor Shabab the Center, distinguished guests, dear colleagues, friends, dear students. It is a great honor for me to receive this award. I am even more pleased with it. The special role that IHG in the Netherlands Corporation had in my career as a university professor and researcher and a consultant in the fields of hydraulic engineering, hydrology and water resources management. To understand that special role, allow me to say something about what happened to Mozambique in the 1970s. I graduated in civil engineering in 1972 at the University of Lorenzo Marx, our national university, and the only one that existed at that time. My area of work was structural design of high-rise buildings and bridges. And next to this subject, that university and simultaneously did some design work as a consultant. Then in 1975 Mozambique became independent. And this historic event caused a massive departure of Portuguese people, creating an enormous problem for the functioning of public institutions, private enterprises, schools and hospitals, with the risk of collapse of the state. All the young people that had some qualifications were called for positions of responsibility in spite of lack of experience. And to get in the areas that the new government considered most important had to be closed. One of the areas with an enormous lack of qualified staff was water resources management and hydraulic infrastructures, whereas most civil engineers were in the fields of structures, roads and railways or in construction. The few working in the water field were almost all doing water supply. The government had plans to build too much dams, continue with the hydrological work, and start negotiations with the neighboring countries on water sharing and management in the many international river basins on which Mozambique is dependent. And so I was asked to leave my field of structural design and start working in hydrology, water resources management and hydraulic infrastructures areas where I do next to nothing. While continuing to lecture at university, I started giving a hand to the newly created DNA, the National Directorate of Water. And that's where I first met the Dutch, who started arriving to lend support to DNA. And I'm very pleased to see here some friendly faces, but especially Professor Hubertserbenai, my dear friend, who on arrival immediately had his name changed to the Portuguese Humbert, which is now, he is still called whenever he comes to Maputo to meet old friends. The Dutch people at DNA taught us a lot, not by being a kind of distant professors, but by working with us side by side, as if they were also Mozambicans. This identification with us, the willingness, acceptance that the country lacked so many things that we were used to, is something that we keep in our hearts and shall never forget. At the same time, in the last years of the 1970s, we started receiving at university professors from the Netherlands to a cooperation program managed by MEPHIP. And this led my university to ask for scholarships in the Netherlands for some of our junior lectures at that time to do our post-Bedwijk studies in water. The first to arrive at IHE was Mr. John Solomon, who became minister of construction and water a few years later. I was the next Mozambican to succeed in here at IHE, not as a minister. I arrived in Delft together with my wife, who worked at DNA, in September 1980. Both of us did scholarships from NAFIC to study at IHE. She was in hydrology and hydrology engineering. Those 11 months that we stayed in Delft were one of the best periods of our lives, and not only because both of us graduated with distinction. It was the excellent teaching that was provided, the learning environment at our disposal, facilities for research when we were doing our business. But it was also the contact with colleagues from so many other countries, from other continents that enriched our lives. It was the few trips in this country and in other countries of Europe, not only to watch fantastic things like the Delta works or special water facilities, but also to see the tulips in the Elton of Naples. It was the general friendliness at IHE and at the city of Delft. And last but not least, the parties and the beer, which compensated, well, almost, the weeks and weeks of grey weather without the glimpse of the sun that we take for granted in Mozambique. Since my education at IHE, I have continued to work in hydrology, water resources management and hydraulic infrastructure, until recently when I retired as I'm already 70 years old. Even though the major part of my work was in lecturing and research at university, I kept my cooperation with DNA, especially on the issue of watershed agreements in international databases. You may be aware that this issue in Mozambique, like in the Netherlands, is quite serious. 50% of our territory lies in these bases. More than 50% of our water resources flows through our western border and we are located downstream of eight of the nine basins that we share with neighboring countries. I refer to an episode that occurred in 1983. Most of the southern Africa region was under a severe drought and our capital city, Maputu, had extreme restrictions in its water supply. We had to ask Swaziland, which is upstream of Mozambique, in Roomba, with the basin, to release more water from its den. The request was supported by the technical work done at DNA by Professor Southern A and by myself and was successful. And less than a year after it, as we were starting to recover from the drought, a devastating cyclone hit Swaziland and Mozambique. And Professor Southern A umberto and other colleagues from Poland did not limit themselves to hydrological populations. They went out there to the submerged areas with their boats and help in the process of his rescuing people. The 80s were a tragic decade in Mozambique due to the civil war that brought death instruction at such a scale that we are now almost 20 years after it's end, still living with the consequences. Much of what we had achieved after independence in areas like good or water supply or the other magic network was destroyed or had to be abandoned. An enormous effort was made in the following decades to recover the hydraulic and water management facilities. I took part in this effort led by DNA and saw the crucial role of the support given by the Netherlands to our water sector. In the past 30 years, much has been achieved in water management in Mozambique in spite of the difficulties. There were great advances in the water law, the modern water policy, new and better institutional arrangements, continuous increase of the agro-matic network, joint studies of shared river basin, more indigenous knowledge and especially more people trained in the field. We achieved also important agreements with countries of Sadek, the southern Africa development community. I am proud to have been part of Mozambique's effort that led to the signing of the Sadek protocol of shared river basins and of the so-called revised protocol. In this work, I've renewed my connections with IHC, with Professor Sathane and Peter van der Sar, which provided the opportunity for my collaboration in the email school PCCP program. Now that you presented me with these prestigious awards, I want to express my deep and heartfelt gratitude to my country, Mozambique, that gave me the opportunity to study at IHC and to work during almost 40 years in this field that I love. The IHC, for all that you have given me during my stay in the 80s, in that built the foundation of the career that I developed. To all my colleagues, Mozambique and Dutch, that guided and helped and stimulated me, and by doing that, allowed me to achieve so much. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Carmel Busch, for your kind and inspiring works. Your Excellencies, honored guests, colleagues, and of course the new students of the IHC Delft in the patch 2019-2021. My name is Johan van der Ek, I'm the Business Director of the Institute, and may I also wish you a warm welcome to IHC Delft. You, the new students, have now become the members of the IHC Delft community. And on our website, you will find that as a mission, we strengthen the institutional capacities in the water sector for global development. We argue that this is not only a noble task, but also that it is challenging and becoming ever more urgent this task. And the good news is, of course, that you are here and that you are participating in this important challenge. You made a choice of study, and I rolled in one of our master programs, and what I would like to do now is to give you already insight into the world after graduation. The examples I will present are taken from the agendas of four groups of possible future employers, either in your own country or region or internationally. And these are the government, the university or the Knowledge Institute, civil society and show, and the private company. First, the government. If we look, for example, at the water sector performance report 2019 that was prepared by the government of Uganda, we clearly see the interlinkages between the various disciplines that relate to the water sector. Chapters in this report refer to urban and rural water supply, sanitation, hygiene, water for production, water resources management, wetlands management, and most of these sound familiar, but there are also chapters on climate change, good governance activities, environmental support services, the interaction with civil society, and many more prospecting themes. Then the university. A recent report from the United Nations University on higher education in the water sector mentions capacity development as a critical component for progress towards the sustainable development goals. Sustainable development goal number six on water and sanitation in particular. The report underlines that the nature of the capacities that are currently required is rapidly changing. Already in 2030, so 70% of the workforce will be in occupations that cannot be predicted accurately today. Also in the water sector, an increasing demand will be placed on the non-technical interpersonal skills such as leadership, ability to interact, coordinate, lead, and to have fluency of ideas as it is called in this report. Then civil society. One of the large and internationally operating NGOs in the field of water is water.org. This organization focuses on bringing water and sanitation to the world through the provision of critical infrastructure and water systems. This is done with the support of a series of global contributing organizations such as the Bruleys, Stela-Antoine, and Pepsi-Cola. And if we look at water.org, the work plan of 2019, we see that the major effort in implementing the water agenda in fact concerns the arrangement with financial institutions. To respond affordable access to water and sanitation. So in this example through the small loan systems that they call water credit initiative. And then how are the companies doing? Let me look at one case, the case of a large British Dutch multinational newly leveled company has to deal with uncertainties. And in their sustainable living plan 2017, they define areas of relevance and significance. They call this materiality. This is for issues that matter most to their business and to stakeholders. The product that they consider is what they call a materiality matrix where reducing environmental impact features prominently. And the water related topics rank highest. For the company, this is about improving access to water and managing water use and abstraction sustainably across the entire value chain. From the water pumped up for growing tomatoes to the livery of the tin of peeled tomatoes to your shop. And what I wanted to illustrate with these examples is a world of complexity and uncertainties in the water sector. And that is a world that you will be facing as a future water expert. This is also a world with a lot of different stakeholders. And one of the institute's objectives is therefore to further stimulate thinking and acting along the lines of interdisciplinarity, as Charlotte also mentioned in her speech. To broaden your skills beyond the disciplines and to challenge you to use imagination, creativity and to be open to the depth, to be inspired. And this eventually brings me back to Professor Carmel Roth and his experience of working in and with different groups including the National Director of Water, Modern Water University and your own company. Having the competencies but also this stamina to successfully combine these interests is, in my opinion, the distinguishing mark of what makes an IHA-Groved alumni an award winner. We may be looking here for the future in this audience also for new awards winners as they are here in the audience. And I hope that we will find them. So thank you very much for your attention. Getting to the end of this exciting program in this event, or at least the official part of the event. Nearby I would like to officially open the academic year of 2019. I have one more announcement to make before we go all down to the canteen for a meet and greet and some drinks and some very Dutch bites and eats. For the embassies who are here now with us represented here. So in a moment I will read out the list of the countries that which are represented by their embassies today. We requested ambassadors or their representatives and students make their way at the table here in the hallway with their flags outside so that you can get to know each other and that you can connect to your embassies and the embassies to the students that are from your country. Now to streamline it a little bit, I will read all the ambassadors or the embassies that are represented here today. And please, to the students, find your embassies and to the representatives of the embassies to go to the flag at the table. So I read them in no particular order. The four countries are represented. The embassies of Ethiopia, the embassies of Sri Lanka, the embassies of Nigeria, the Palestinian mission to the Netherlands, the embassies of Uganda, the embassies of India, the embassies of Ghana, the embassies of USA, the embassies of Sudan, the embassies of Belgium, the embassies of Chile, of Rwanda, Turkey, China, Tanzania, South Africa, Russia, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Yemen, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam, the embassies of Philippines, Iran, Milan, Iran, I hope that they are all here, at least they announced that they were coming. So I hope that all there and that the students can connect to their embassies. So with that, I would invite the embassies and the students to go to the hallway and follow us a little later towards the drinks downstairs. Thank you.