International water and urban development congress

09.09.2022

From 11 to 15 September 2022, more than 8,000 experts, innovators, advisers, manufacturers and organisations from the water sector will gather for the World Water Congress & Exhibition at Bella Center in Copenhagen. It is the culmination of several years of efforts to get the International Water Association event to Denmark. COWI is a gold sponsor, and we look forward to meeting with customers and partners in the coming days to discuss the importance of water for sustainable urban development.

Meet us at the congress C2-200J

Water and climate adaptation are at the top of COWI's agenda, and the need to develop and implement new sustainable and innovative solutions for climate change adaptation in our cities is more urgent than ever. According to the UN, more than two-thirds of the world's population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050. This makes water a key element in sustainable development and urban planning. Liveable cities around the globe require proper sanitation, sewage treatment and reliable, clean water supplies. And solutions for how to make the best use of and ensure access, distribution and management of water resources will be crucial to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

COWI is among the presenters at the event. Come by our stand and hear more about how we collaborate with our customers on innovative and multipurpose solutions, circularity, biodiversity, smart urban planning, improved and digitised supplies and climate adaptation - now and in the future.

"Right now, we are seeing that the water sector is taking huge responsibility for adapting our cities to climate change. Utility companies have an incredibly important task in terms of sustainability and the climate agenda that we must raise as a society," says Gitte Godsk Dalgaard, Senior Vice President at COWI, Society and Utilities.

In Denmark and the Nordic countries, we are doing well. The quality of our drinking water is high, and water supply to private households is taken as a matter of course. However, previous models of water supply and wastewater management are being challenged by increasing population density, high consumption in the industry and, not least, climate change, leading to more unpredictability in rainfall and water conditions due to climate change. Many utility companies are already well on the way to developing from primarily supplying clean drinking water and managing wastewater to contributing more broadly to the green transition. Wastewater treatment plants are becoming energy producing rather than energy consuming, and new opportunities arise to connect wastewater systems with new energy systems.