Anna University to tie-up with German universities for a cause

Anna University of Chennai has collaborated with German University, to come up with working solutions for reducing wastage of water in Indian cities. Their main goal is to implement a model plan in the town of Tiruvannamalai.

In order to come up with the new model, Anna University's Centre for Water Resources and Centre for Environmental Studies along with the team from University of Written/ Herdecke GmbH, Germany has organised a 4-day workshop.

The workshop is titles as 'Development and demonstration of a technology-based business concept for sustainable management of Water Losses in Urban Environment (WaLUE)'.

The workshop was inaugurated at an event on the Guindy campus by the Vice Chancellor of Anna University- M.Rajaram in the presence of the Chief Guest, CEO of Tamil Nadu Water Investment Company, Ashok Natrajan and Professors K Rudolph and Bergeron from German University.

Anna University Vice Chancellor, on addressing the need for co-operation between public and governing bodies in Indian cities said, "Over 15% of the world's population lives in urban areas. For many cities across the world, their institutional capacity has allowed them to enable their residents to co-operate and create a sustainable water supply."

"Almost one-third of the water supplied in urban environments is either through leaks or is not included in revenue or metering. This is why it is imperative to create a sustainable model, not just for India, but the world", he added.

Explaining about the model that was being worked on, P Bergeron, consultant to the BMBF German Federal Ministry of Education and Research said, "The main lack is that of implementation. We have set up an organisation in Germany called Assistance for Implementation (AIM), through which we will deepen the conceptual coverage of the entire technology development cycle."

The workshop is held for four days, starting from 23rd to 26th September, 2013. Here, the students of Anna University and German institutes will collaborate with the Tiruvannamalai Town Council Authorities, to implement the model as per the plan.