Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) Germany

Short description

Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) is one of the eleven Universities of Excellence in Germany that coalesces natural and engineering sciences with humanities and social sciences, as well as medicine. This wide range of disciplines obligates the university to promote interdisciplinarity and to contribute to the integration of science into society. TUD aims to establish a balance between professional and personal responsibilities and strives to ensure equal opportunity in all its employment practices. The TUD members cultivate positive, trusting relationships in teaching, studies and research. In this environment, different biographies and career aspirations are enabled to develop to their fullest potential. TUD promotes its international character and its members as well as cross-border cooperation in research and teaching.

INOWAS

The project will be implemented by the Research Group INOWAS (“Innovative Groundwater Solutions”) under the Department of Hydrosciences of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences. The research fields of the INOWAS group focus on the development of nature-inspired solutions for increasing the water availability through safe water storage in the subsurface with the aim to enable sustainable use for food production, drinking water supply and for safeguarding environmental benefits. The specific research goals include:

  • Filling the knowledge gaps in understanding the natural and human-induced processes related to groundwater-based natural infrastructure and characterization of their spatial and temporal variability;
  • Developing reliable tools and methods for simulating and forecasting the impact of managing the aquifers’ recharge on the local and regional hydrological cycle;
  • Bridging research with societal needs for the co-participative development of sustainable water resources management.

To achieve these goals, the group developed a transdisciplinary research strategy that provides a multi- scale perspective for understanding and simulating the nature-inspired solutions based on a combination of physical and mathematical models of different complexities and boundary conditions. The free groundwater modelling platform developed by the INOWAS group (https://www.inowas.com) contains a collection of web-based tools of different complexities for the analytical and numerical simulation of groundwater processes related to managed aquifer recharge.

AGREEMAR team

Catalin Stefan

PROJECT COORDINATOR

Dr. Catalin Stefan is the Head of Research Group INOWAS at TUD and the Coordinator of AGREEMAR project. His research focuses on planning, assessment and optimisation of managed aquifer recharge applications using physical models and computer-based simulations. Dr. Stefan received his PhD on Environmental Sciences in 2007 and works at TUD since 2004 as Research Associate. Since 2019, he is Co-Chair of the Commission on Managing Aquifer Recharge of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) and since 2016 active member of Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP). He is the initiator and co-author of the Global MAR Portal, an inventory of over 1000 MAR case studies worldwide. Dr. Stefan has experience in coordinating and managing international networks and partnerships with regional focus on Central America and Central and Southeast Asia. In AGREEMAR, Dr. Stefan will be responsible for general project management and coordination (WP6).

Jana Glass

Project Member

Dr. Jana Glass is experienced groundwater modeller working with the INOWAS group since 2014. Dr. Glass is the main architect of the web-based simulation platform INOWAS and has extensive experience on using analytical and numerical tools for groundwater modelling at MAR sites. Her work includes a comprehensive review of analytical and numerical tools for modelling of MAR, some of which she applied for assessing the performance of MAR at different case studies in Vietnam, Germany, etc. Dr. Glass also brought important contributions to further development of HYDRUS 2D/3D, the state-of- the-art software for vadose zone modelling, by proposing a new boundary condition related to MAR simulations.

European Project Center (EPC)

The AGREEMAR Team at TUD benefits of valuable administrative support provided by the European Project Center (EPC). The EPC is an internal unit belonging to Directorate 5. Research of TUD that provides advice about European programmes for research funding, training and third country co-operation, and about support from the European Structural Funds. The EPC team has far-reaching knowledge of EU funding policy and extensive experience in implementing the individual programmes and actions. In addition to consulting on funding, the EPC’s key competences lie in administrative project management.

Publications (selection)

  • Sallwey, J., Schlick, R., Bonilla, J., Stefan, C. (2019) Suitability mapping for managed aquifer recharge: development of web-tools. Water, 11(11): 2254. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11112254.
  • Sallwey, J., Bonilla Valverde, J.P., Vásquez López, F., Junghanns, R., Stefan, C. (2018) Suitability maps for managed aquifer recharge: a review of multi-criteria decision analysisstudies. Environmental Reviews, 27(2): 138-150. https://doi.org/10.1139/er-2018-0069.
  • Glass, J., Jain, R., Junghanns, R., Sallwey, J., Fichtner, T., Stefan, C. (2018) Web-based tool compilation of analytical equations for groundwater management applications. EnvironmentalModelling & Software, 108: 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2018.07.008.
  • Glass, J., Via Rico, D.A., Stefan, C., Tran, T.V.N. (2018) Simulation of the impact of managed aquifer recharge on the groundwater system in Hanoi, Vietnam. Hydrogeology Journal, 26:2427–2442. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-018-1779-1.
  • Stefan, C., Ansems, N. (2018) Web-based global inventory of managed aquifer rechargeapplications. Sustainable Water Resources Management, 4(2): 153-162. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-017-0212-6.