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The WaterEurope project was an innovative pedagogic programme within the Erasmus+ framework, initiated by University Nice Sophia Antipolis (France) in association with five partners: Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (Germany), Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain), Newcastle University (UK), Polytechnic University of Warsaw (Poland) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). WaterEurope was dedicated to promote a new project oriented pedagogic approach and to develop a unique set of pedagogic resources focused on water resources and water related hazards management strategies. The project was targeting MSc students from the partner universities specializing on hydroinformatics. The new resources combined with an innovative pedagogic method based on the collaborative engineering concept was integrated as a mandatory module of the MSc courses and associated to 6 ECTS to successful students. WaterEurope aims to promote key concepts, methodologies, tools and the best practices essential for water resources and water related hazards management strategies. Today, the problems related to water are more and more complex and must be analyzed in a global way and with the right tools. The produced resources, combined with the collaborative platform, allow introducing to the MSc participants, the increasingly complex issues of integrated water resources, droughts and floods management. Experience has shown that the most effective way is through the adoption of an integrated approach for water resources management – one that recognizes for example both the opportunities provided by floodplains for socioeconomic activities and manages the associated risks – which is essential for the sustainable use of resources. Thanks to the long-term scientific cooperation of the academic partners, the members of the consortium have shared with participants a new approach that was developed by the consortium itself in the last years and that is now adopted within many on-going project and follow the Sustainable Development Goals promoted by the UN. Along with the solid academic theoretical preparation, WaterEurope provided to participants with a hands-on experience opportunity to work on real case studies such as the Vésubie and Var catchments in France which faced a challenging situation regarding resources management (matching users expectations), droughts and disastrous floods such as in October 2020 in the Vesubie catchment. Through the intensive use of modern ICT, the resources and the innovative pedagogic approach offer to the participants the opportunity to explore new methods and to assess management strategies thanks to a Collaborative Engineering Platform that the consortium will create and develop. This unique environment benefited from the most advanced technologies and the most advanced modelling tools provided by research and industrial partners. The objective is there to setup a unique numerical environment that gathers the most advanced modelling tools and allows all participants to be exposed to such technologies. This unique collaborative working platform groups all modelling tools developed by world leading enterprises and research institutes. WaterEurope was planned for a duration of three years with 3 validation sessions lasting three months each year (November to February). During the first 3 months, participants are based at their home university and work remotely collaborating with their peers through the platform. A final and intensive 2 weeks phase reunites all participants at one location where they finally conclude their work project and validate resources. Collaboration in this environment demands new skills and a new technological culture to be generated just by doing. This is a challenge for the European dimension where future experts and engineers from different countries with different languages, different mentalities as well as different specializations and professional experiences have to collaborate in their daily professional activities. Training of collaborating in such new environment is the challenge of this project that by collaboration of the 6 WaterEurope partners will help to establish common high quality teaching courses and establish links between students from the involved countries. At the end of the 3 years project, following the validation of the pedagogic resources and the collaborative engineering approach, professors and expert have prepared a final informative report on water resources management and water related hazard management strategies for European cities and in the other hand a synthesis on the new resources and implemented pedagogic approach. The conclusions included in the report have been presented during the multiplier event held in June 2021 during the international conference SimHydro. Despite the pandemic situation, most of the activities took place as planned and the 3 validations sessions were organizes as the multiplier event.
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