Master of Science in Water Resources Engineering

The Master in Water Resources Engineering (WRE) programme provides outstanding multi-disciplinary training in the disciplines that underpin integrated water resources engineering, focusing on the use of numerical simulation tools and on integrated water management. This 2-year MSc programme is organized by VUB and KU Leuven. It provides higher education in the field of water resources engineering with the aim to equip future professionals and scientists with the scientific, technical and managerial knowledge, attitudes and skills they need to:

• successfully plan, design, operate and manage water resources projects; and
• advise and support authorities in decision-making and the development of policies and regulations that enhance the safe exploitation and re-use of water, the equitable distribution and the conservation of the local, regional and global water resources.

The primary purpose is training of students in the development and the proper use of numerical tools for water resources modelling, supporting integrated water management. As this is an important point, most of our adaptations aim to strengthen the knowledge on integrated water management. A new course on "Integrated Water Management" will be organized in year 1 from 2016-17 onwards. If the ICP status of the program is maintained, new case studies of the South will be introduced in the new course “Integrated Water Management” and in the Integrated Project of year 2 from the academic year 2016-2017 onwards (thanks to the increased collaboration with our partner institutions in the South and the incremental budget). The same cases are also considered for the practical sessions of several other courses and workshops to stress the relevance in the South and act as a ‘glue’ towards integration among the different subjects.

The requested incremental funding will be used to increase the level of partnerships with the South in a gradual process. The collaboration starts with joint master thesis supervision, and the joint organization of an Integrated Project in which students from the different institutions work as a group on a multi-faceted case study. A next level of cooperation is semester exchange, which on the longer term can involve to a joint degree programme. For an efficient use of funding, we will only develop a joint semester with partners with whom we already have intensive co-operation in research and capacity building projects as it the case for the University of Cuenca (Ecuador), Arba Minch University (Ethiopia), and NM-AIST (Tanzania). They are the intended core partners, but in each of the countries there will be satellite partners.