ICT for Water Efficiency

Ian Abbott Donnelly:   Ian's role in IBM is to lead European Smarter City Innovation for Software Group. He is also a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. He enjoys pushing the boundaries of IBM in the areas of Smarter Planet, Smarter Cities and Smarter Water; along with the application of information science to the challenges of environment and sustainability.

Prior to IBM he was Head of Technology for English Nature. At English Nature he used information and systems to enable stewardship and regulation for over 4000 special protected sites for nature conservation across England (~8% of the land area of England).

He aims to combine the diverse disciplines of: data, technology, innovation, change and ‘learning from natural systems’; this helps me make sense of the world and creates useful insight to show how it could work better.

Kat Austen Head of Research and Design -  Information Innovation Lab

Kat is a person. She’s interested in lots of things and phenomena, how things are connected, and why they are connected. She likes patterns but doesn’t have to have them. In the temporal melting-pot of her life so far she has been a scientist, an artist, a journalist and a writer. She welcomes a humane and environmentally kind future.

Dr Simon Walters :  Simon is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Brighton, teaching electrical and electronic engineering. His expertise lies in electrical and electronic engineering, including high voltage and automotive engineering, and his research portfolio focusses on the development and application of electronics, intelligent systems and signal-processing techniques.

Before becoming an academic Simon worked in industry as a Chief Test Engineer and has continued to seek out opportunities to collaborate with businesses since joining the University.

Dr Lydia S. Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences. She is a member of the Centre for Water Systems research group, an internationally leading group specialising in the development and application of advanced computer based technologies for the water industry. Her main area of expertise is optimization techniques using artificial intelligence, multicriteria decision making, fuzzy systems and System Dynamics Modelling with particular application to water systems. She has long experience, for over 10 years, of ongoing and past FP6/FP7 projects (AQUASTRESS, WASSERMED, PREPARED) as WP leader, and as leader of FP7 clustering actions (CLIWASEC, ICT4WATER). She is currently the Project Manager of iWIDGET (www.iwidget.eu ), an ongoing EU project (€5M) looking into smart water ICT applications for the water industry and the consumers.