Drought, water scarcity, but also heavy rain, floods and pollutants: Climate change is bringing more and more so-called water extremes, which also have consequences for our society. Shortly before the city of Dresden banned water withdrawals from surface waters by general decree due to persistent drought, scientists from the EXU emerging fields "Water Research" and "Societal Change" met in the network studio "Water Extremes and Societal Change" on 27 June 2022, to identify intersections between their respective research areas and jointly develop project ideas. 

As an introduction, Prof. Christian Prunitsch (Societal Change) and Prof. Stefan Stolte (Water Research) presented the emerging fields and their current challenges. Afterwards, Dr. Firas Aljanabi gave an insight into the work of the Global Water and Climate Adaption Center (ABCD-Center after its locations in Aachen, Bangkok, Chennai and Dresden) and presented possible starting points for a collaboration.

Already at the beginning of the networking studio, which was organized by the coordinators of the emerging fields, Mareike Braeckevelt and Lucas von Ramin, as well as with the help of the TUD Project Scout Dr. Rico Hickmann and the staff of the Disruption and Societal Change Center of the TUD (TUDiSC), the participants were divided into interdisciplinary teams of two. Following the introduction, the teams had the opportunity to exchange ideas internally in two rounds and to develop initial project ideas during the "Speed Idea Generation". 

This resulted in twelve project ideas that could be assigned to five clusters: "Water/Ecosystems/Pollutants", "Water/Digitalization", "Water/Cultural Differences/Change of Attitudes", "Water/Urban Area and Catchment", and "Water/Infrastructures/Capacities." Three of the five clusters were then selected to be elaborated more concretely in the following one-hour group work, "Idea Development".

During the following presentation of the three project ideas, it quickly became clear that joint further work at the intersection of the emerging fields is promising and should ideally be complemented by the additional expertise of other researchers from TUD. The potential of a cooperation with the ABCD Center also became obvious, so that the participants expressed great interest in a continuation of the network studio this year. 

Networking Studio "Water Extremes and Societal Change"

The emerging fields as well as the Project Scouts and TUDiSC are measures of the excellence strategy of the TU Dresden. The Network Studio was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Saxony as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments.