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Waterflows in Germany II Education for Sustainability, Information Transfer to Experts in Water Management and International Networking

The project "Water flows in Germany" starts into a second phase in which it will create an educational package for schools. Since 2011 the project has collected information about water and its use in Germany and presented it by various innovative media. In addition to the poster "Go with the flow" the IÖW launched the portal www.bmbf.wasserfluesse.de/en.

Interest students for water issues

In order to make the topic water even more tangible for school classes, the IÖW is now working on a new educational package. The project work in schools on water should be encouraged and carried out by a versatile material package that is based on recent scientific results. The project will develop both offline and online offers for the classroom that invite the students to discover, explore and understand cross-regional relationships. It will cover issues such as natural water availability in the region and private consumption of households. Besides the natural water flows and direct water uses, the concept of virtual water is conveyed: How much water do we consume indirectly through the consumption of Spanish tomatoes or with the t-shirt made from imported cotton? The project material will be designed in a manner that it can be individualized by the study groups and promotes cooperation with local actors outside the school.

Expand Water Knowledge Platform

In the first phase of the project "Water flows in Germany" the interactive knowledge platform for natural water availability, climate change impacts on water resources, regionally differentiated water uses and virtual water flows was developed and offers a great potential to absorb and reflect more dimensions of water knowledge. Contents from other projects or knowledge platforms could be integrated, more regional differences in relation to Germany or to other regional reference areas could be constituted or the status of implementation of the Water Framework Directive in Europe could be represented. The potential for the expansion of the knowledge platform "Water flows" and the opportunities for a collaboration with other German or international institutions for the development of such a platform will be explored within this second phase of the project - including actions like the presentation of the project at national and international conferences and by implementing an international workshop with other experts on data and knowledge platforms.