Singapore-Delft Water Alliance (SDWA) is multi-national, Interdisciplinary research Centre of Excellence for Water Knowledge involving PUB (Singapore), National University Singapore and WL | Delft Hydraulics (The Netherlands), established through an initiative of the National Research Foundation in Singapore. SDWA is hosted by National University of Singapore and provides research home to scientists and engineers from all partner organizations.

SDWA research agenda adopts systemic approach to the water problem and addresses entire hydrological cycle in an interconnected fashion. The research agenda encompasses interaction of natural and artificial (man made) worlds so that urban water cycle and water supply form an integral part of our research activities. SDWA places strong emphasis to the information cycle in respect of water cycle through smart sensing of aquatic environment, intelligent data processing, as well as deterministic, self-learning and adaptive modelling.

SDWA research agenda can be broadly categorised into the following five areas:

• Analysis of aquatic systems: interaction/dependencies/causalities between components, modeling, relationship between inputs and outputs, uncertainty;

• Recognition, study and implementation of the information cycle in respect of water based systems: acquisition (monitoring/remote sensing), archiving (databases), analysis (GIS/MIS), modelling (generation of new knowledge), decision support;

• Smart sensing of aquatic environment: sensing, monitoring, analytical processing of data, coupled with numerical modelling;

• Integration of (aquatic) systems: aspects of hydrology, hydraulic engineering, environmental sciences and social sciences (economics, sociology, politics), interdisciplinary analysis;

• Taking account of social impacts and responses: consequences for society and vice versa, risk/hazard management;

SDWA deliberately focuses on applications to all areas of integrated water management, and especially to river basins, aquifers, urban water systems, estuaries, and coastal waters. It is as much concerned with the management of the environment (as an asset) from a planning and design perspective or from a real time forecasting and warning point of view, as it is with the simulation and analysis of extreme events: floods, surges, droughts, pollution and significant morphological and ecological changes. SDWA addresses issues to do with providing advice using integrated data collection, modelling and decision support systems to different demand groups such as farmers and flood or drought prone communities as well as contractors or operators. It has significant implications for other topic areas such as integrated water resources management, capacity building, knowledge management, learning alliances, policy analysis, and so on.

SDWA research focuses within the following six disciplines:

• hydrodynamics
• hydrology
• morphodynamics
• water quality & ecology
• policy analysis
• hydroinformatics