Singapore-Delft Water Alliance

Singapore-Delft Water Alliance (SDWA) is a multi-national, Interdisciplinary research Centre of Excellence for Water Knowledge involving PUB (Singapore), National University of 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.

==History==
As part of Singapore's push to be a Global Hydrohub, a memorandum of understanding was signed in 2006 between NUS, PUB and Delft Hydraulics to create a center of excellence for water knowledge at NUS . This MoU resulted in the creation of SDWA which was officially launched on Feb. 2007 . Since its inception, SDWA has already started work on 8 research projects with more in the pipeline.
Currently SDWA is led by Assoc. Prof. Vladan Babovic as the Director and Assoc. Prof. Sanjay Swarup as the Deputy Director.

Research Focus

SDWA's research focus lies within the following six disciplines:

hydrodynamics
hydrology
morphodynamics
water quality & ecology
policy analysis
hydroinformatics

Projects

The ongoing research projects are
1. MHBox: This project focuses on understanding and developing better forecasting systems for residual currents.
2. Peatland: Peatlands store a large fraction of the world's carbon resources. However the most rapid peatland degradation currently occurs in Southeast Asia. The aims of this project are to support large-scale implementation of mitigative water management and improved spatial planning of production and conservation areas in peatlands.
3. Pandan project aims to understand the fundamental processes and interactions in an urban water system to be able to develop adequate and cost-effective water improvement measures through the creation of an Aquatic Science Center in Pandan Canal
The remaining 3 research projects are part of a larger Marine research study and consist of
4. Mangrove Project 5. Seagrass Project and 6. Sediment Project
==Education==
SDWA considers that strong research capabilities and activities are essential to education and training. As such students and course participants are exposed to mature reflections on the results generated through the research projects in which SDWA members are involved, and also to results from research done elsewhere.
As part of this approach SDWA is spearheading a new double M.Sc. degree program in Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management in collaboration between the National University of Singapore and the Delft University of Technology. The programme is based on an institutionally innovative concept under which students spend one year of study in both Singapore and The Netherlands and receive separate M.Sc. degrees from both Universities.
The inaugural intake for this double M.Sc. degree program will start in August 2009 and the closing date for applications to this intake is May 29, 2009.