What is Water Management?
In The Netherlands water is one of the main topics. Because of the rising sea level, the many rivers, because of possible drought in the summer, the importance of the transportation on the rivers and because of the flooding danger.
All of these things are investigated, tested, thought of, created, rebuild and managed by Rijkswaterstaat.
Rijkswaterstaat is a governmental organisation that has existed since 1798. “Rijkswaterstaat is de rijksdienst die werkt aan droge voeten, schoon en voldoende water én aan de vlotte en veilige doorstroming van het verkeer” (Rijkswaterstaat is the national agency that provides dry feet, clean and sufficient water and a quick and safe flow of traffic).
Now three KaosPilots are working with WINN which is the department for water innovation in LEF which is a part of Rijkswaterstaat. One of their main foci is climate change and our assignment is simple:
In a few decades it might happen that because of the melting glaciers the rivers in The Netherlands will mainly be rain rivers. Which could mean too little water in the summer and too much water in the winter. -How would a government or an entrepreneur look at this?
We have worked hard on twisting our minds around this “problem”, tried to see opportunities instead of obstacles and we have meet a lot of people whose knowledge around this topic is incredible. There are many people working in these kinds of issues in the world and a lot of great ideas are already out there. We will through our process give another perspective and hopefully “our ways of working” can inspire and lead to new ideas and results.
On Friday the team is facilitating a workshop for the people working in LEF and others who might be able to help us with our process and give us feedback. This is one of the “ways of working” which we will use to challenge our ideas and the project and maybe through this we will encourage, what we are focussing on, awareness of the water in The Netherlands.
This also ties in to a little side assignment we have, namely trying out the Future Center. The Future Center is a different kind of working space that you can redesign and style, as you want so it fits the session you are having. All the furniture is movable, the walls are on wheels and with a lot of technical equipment is it possible to change lights, projections on the wall, lower/heighten the floors and much more.
So this is all going to be put to the test by the end of this week. We will let you know how it goes.
