IDWS 2025 Agenda

Sustainable desalination using green energy in the industrial age 5.1

Managing Health through Licensing of Water Professionals to ensure safe drinking water

DC Water serves over 700,000 residents and more than 25,000,000 annual visitors in the nation's capital, which is unique as the only major US metropolitan city without a second source of drinking water. Guided by a strategic plan, Blueprint 2.0, built around 5 imperatives - healthy, safe and well; reliable; equitable; resilient; and sustainable - DC Water is focused on innovative approaches to water management. In this keynote, the CEO will highlight the resilient and sustainable imperatives, exploring how DC Water plans to address the challenges of a single water source and the future direction of regional policy to ensure reliable and sustainable water services.

This segment, organised by the Saudi Water Authority in collaboration with the World Bank, will showcase successful regulatory models, share best practices, and discuss the regulatory transformation journeys experienced by various countries.

The water and wastewater sector is at a crossroads, facing escalating pressures from population growth, water scarcity, and pollution, but also unprecedented opportunities for renewal. This keynote will explore how policymakers and regulators can enable innovation, mobilize private participation, and attract sustainable finance to strengthen resilience and performance. Drawing lessons from the reset process in England and Wales and global experiences, it will highlight how effective, transparent, and independent regulation is critical to safeguard the long-term sustainability of the services and success of public-private partnerships. By turning regulation into a catalyst for trust, investment, and innovation, the sector can deliver resilient and inclusive water services fit for the future.

Specially curated panel bringing together water and environmental leaders to discuss navigating water and environmental challenges in their respective country and the frameworks used to encourage innovation in tackling them, co-organised by SWA and the World Bank Group.

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Interactive segment with audience questions and closing reflections from the panelists.

Get first-hand insights from executive leaders as they delve into how local content strategies and intellectual property frameworks can foster sustainable solutions, drive technological advancements, and support Saudi Arabia's vision for water resource management. Gain exclusive insights into the intersection of policy, innovation, and collaboration in addressing one of the most critical challenges of our time.

Experiences and insights of Yangtze River Basin covering governance, policies and regulation strategies, as well as water administrative of law enforcement.

Italmatch and IntelliSense will outline the application of industrial AI technology to for process optimization in Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination. We will introduce our approach and key learnings from the mining and metals industry. We will discuss key value opportunities in data quality, normalization, predict-simulate-optimize for managing biofouling and component life, and integration of AI with chemistry. Generative AI technologies, when coupled with this objective-driven AI, show promise for embedding domain expertise for consistent operational improvement. Increased plant uptime, membrane life, and reduced operating costs are targeted.

High non-revenue water (NRW) in water supply systems is a global problem wasting valuable resources (water, chemicals and energy) and its management is a key challenge for water utilities worldwide. Very often lack of clear understanding of the causes of this high NRW and its key components hinders successful implementation of water loss reduction programmes.

Discuss how fostering transparency can build public trust, the role of establishing clear standards, and how smart incentives can drive desired behaviors.

Impact on Saudi Water Strategy, Saudi Vision 2030, SDG-6 and SWA Strategy