IDWS 2025 Agenda

The session will spotlight water investments and offer insights on aligning financing with global sustainability goals.

Ensuring water security in increasingly complex and climate-stressed water systems requires a new operational paradigm: digital intelligence, the ability to sense, model, predict and act across entire networks with accuracy and speed. As one of Europe’s largest water operators, Acea has developed a set of integrated solutions that combine AI, advanced modelling and smart operational platforms to improve efficiency, reduce losses and strengthen resilience.

Discover how Singapore’s water ecosystem enables practical, cross-sector collaboration to drive sustainable innovation. This session will showcase how industry-to-industry partnerships, supported by a strong regulatory and innovation framework, are delivering real solutions to diverse water challenges in business and industrial settings.

This keynote showcases how successful public-private models are helping cities scale access, innovation, and accountability in water services.

The workshop will explore the concept of local content and how it is calculated, as well as the mechanisms for prioritizing local content at project, product, and investment levels. The workshop will also highlight key local content initiatives and success stories in the water, environment, and food sectors.

The panel will explore how good governance, industry stewardship, technology, and finance can create basin resilience and deliver scalable, long-term water sustainability solutions.

Using agentic and generative AI to provide a no-code tool for governments, utilities, corporates and investors to quantify the economic and societal value of water to different users. Application use cases that will be presented include: mobilising investment, optimising capital allocation, improving financial sustainability, and advancing equitable outcomes.

Explore how innovative partnerships and blended finance models are mobilizing multi-billion-dollar investments to accelerate water security projects across Africa. Showcases scalable strategies that can be replicated globally.

Water no longer plays by the same rules, and conventional UF systems often struggle to keep pace. That pressure sits at the center of Acuriant’s mission: tackling challenging water while maximizing limited space. In the past year, Acuriant’s Nanostone division has moved from a single-module offering to a three-module ceramic UF portfolio. In this session, Chief Science Officer Dr. Christian Göbbert introduces CUF|FlowTM, the newest module engineered for high-capacity UF water treatment. CUF|FlowTM shifts the economics of ceramic ultrafiltration and gives utilities a clear reason to re-evaluate PFAS-free ceramic UF for today’s rapidly changing, variable source-water conditions. The presentation outlines the science and performance advances behind the module, how it fits technically alongside the broader Nanostone ceramic UF portfolio, and why this launch positions CUF|FlowTM as the ceramic UF option capable of reshaping the competitive landscape with conventional UF.

Ideas for achieving global water security through commercial innovation and private sector partnerships rather than traditional aid models. The speech will emphasize how market-driven solutions and American technological leadership can deliver sustainable, scalable outcomes that create mutual economic benefits. It calls for bold international collaboration to transform water challenges into opportunities for prosperity.

Flocon®️ 305FT is a new tailor-made antiscalant designed specifically for brackish water RO systems, combining high-performance scale inhibition with online detectability features. Its advanced formulation provides strong protection against calcium carbonate, sulfate scales, and challenging water conditions containing iron, helping operators run systems at higher recovery with reduced fouling risk. Laboratory tests confirm excellent scale control under high-stress conditions and demonstrate a stable, linear fluorescence signal that enables precise real-time monitoring using standard sensors. Field experience further validates its value, showing stable membrane performance, and improved dosing accuracy. Overall, Flocon®️ 305FT offers an effective and reliable solution for BWRO plants seeking enhanced operational control, optimized chemical usage, and long-term membrane protection.

Insights into how water and energy efficiency go hand-in-hand with water-first innovation driving circular value chains, recovering heat, recycling water, and reducing waste across sectors.

Explore how to address water scarcity while simultaneously reducing energy consumption in desalination processes, particularly reverse osmosis (RO). The discussion will focus on ensuring long-term sustainability without compromising environmental integrity, and will feature perspectives from leading innovators in the water and energy sectors.

This case study explores smart irrigation systems and water reuse technologies that strengthen the water-energy-food nexus. It highlights specific projects how water technology innovations reduce water and energy consumption in agricultural settings while enhancing food security and climate resilience.

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) developed an innovative technology to extract lithium from seawater. This case study highlights the translation activities and collaborative efforts among the KAUST startup Lithium Infinity and key stakeholders in the Kingdom—including the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, Ma’aden, Saudi Aramco, and KAUST. Together, they are advancing the use of this technology to extract battery-grade lithium from in-Kingdom resources such as oil-field produced water, with the broader goal of establishing a localized lithium supply chain in Saudi Arabia.