Welcome to Water-kennis, an immersive media experience! Turn on your tap, shower or flush your toilet and clean water flows out. But where does this water come from?

How can we work together to take a critical and fresh look at what is needed for a liveable future? This artwork symbolises the ambition to anchor the GRROW philosophy in the water sector.

The markings on the ground form boundaries within which KWR colleagues immersed in Virtual Reality (VR) can safely move. There may actually be colleagues with VR glasses on their faces. They do not see the cascade and the wooden floor, but a virtual world presented to them through the VR glasses.

Here we are testing the purifying action of a new form of sustainable agriculture: wet cultivation or paludiculture. Paludiculture can be applied in areas with high water tables, such as peatlands. The cultivated crops make a positive contribution because they counteract soil subsidence and CO2 emissions from peat soils that were previously drained for agricultural purposes. Moreover paludiculture boosts biodiversity.

AquaMinerals seeks, develops and operates application destinations for the material streams generated by water treatment processes. We were initially set up for all the Dutch drinking water utilities, but have since also become active for a Belgian drinking water utility and a number of Dutch Water Authorities. This collective, sectoral collaboration dedicated to the ‘valorisation’ of residual streams is unique in the world. It provides the sector with purchasing, sales and innovation power. Over the last few years the results have been both measurable and compelling.

Wateropleidingen is the training institute for the water sector. We offer practical and inspiring training courses in drinking water, water management, water safety, sewerage & urban water and water treatment. And where there are other requirements, we provide customised courses and didactic support. Under the flag of World Water Academy, we share practical water knowledge abroad. The use of knowledge and skills in daily work practice is central and forms the starting point for our vision of learning. In our programmes, you learn from the knowledge and experience of lecturers and expand your network in the water sector.

This apiary on the KWR grounds was set up to encourage biodiversity. The bees find pollen and nectar in the flower meadow that was created specially for this purpose. The twelve hives are managed by a beekeeper who monitors the bee colonies regularly. The result – pure golden honey – is on sale in our restaurant all year round.

This experimental drinking water pipe network was installed aboveground and purposefully designed to allow for the testing of autonomous inspection robots. Technicians from four water utilities helped build the network, each bringing with them their own way of working and preferred materials. The pipes used are mainly made of PVC, PE and nodular cast iron. Old, rusty pipe segments can also be included.

The artificial grass system, developed and tested within the framework of CitySports, temporarily stores infiltrating rainwater in a hollow foundation located directly under the playing pitch. Through capillary action, the water is returned to the surface for evaporation. Thanks to this system, the rainwater is captured (not discharged to the sewage system or surface water) and is made available for evaporation and thereby to cool the pitch. The system provides a solution to the negative features of existing artificial grass pitches, such as the (overly) rapid discharge of rainwater and the extreme heating due to the absence of cooling through evaporation, without compromising on pitch playability.

Smartroof 2.0 is a new generation roof system that – in contrast to current green roofs – provides for long-term and optimal evaporation for cooling in the city. Surplus rainwater is held in the storage layer and then fed back by capillary action through special fibres to the substrate layer, whenever required by the plants. The passive irrigation system has been optimised in this project and supported with innovative monitoring of the water and energy balance, which is done using specially adapted lysimeters.