Launched by the IAHR/IWA joint technical committee on Urban Drainage in 2005, the Poul Harremoës Award is given at each triennial International Conference on Urban Drainage (ICUD) to the presentation of novel and ideally provocative ideas relating to developments in urban drainage by young authors (up to 35 years old). The aim of the award is to inspire young researchers to push the field forward, to be bold and daring by challenging the status quo, and always asking the difficult questions.

Prof. Poul Harremoës was a globally renowned water engineer and Professor on Environmental Science and Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). . 

At each ICUD, three nominees are selected to present their submission in a plenary session of the ICUD. Each of these nominees is given the opportunity to publish their paper in Water Science & Technology.

The award is given to the presentation of novel and ideally provocative ideas relating to developments in urban drainage by young authors (up to 35 years old), who are the first paper authors and have indicated their interest to enter this competition. 

Authors of highly rated extended abstracts will be asked to submit full papers for further evaluation by the Poul Harremoës Awar (PHA) scientific committee, which will select the best three contributions to be presented in the Plenary Session on the first day of the Conference. The Committee will then choose the winner from these presentations and will announce the winner during the Conference Dinner.

The two assessment criteria for the award are: 

• Innovation, originality and promotion/development of new concepts in urban drainage, and

• The candidate's ability to present the ideas in a dynamic and convincing way and respond adequately to questions asked by the panel during the plenary session.

The two criteria have equal weight. 

16th Edition | 2024
Tunable linear feedback control of urban drainage systems using models defined purely from data
Travis Dantzer, University of Michigan, USA

4th Edition | 2017
Virtual reality in urban water management: communicating urban flooding with particle-based CFD simulations
Daniel Winkler, Jonatan Zischg, Wolfgang Rauch

3rd Edition | 2014
Commercial microwave links instead of rain gauges: fiction or reality?
Martin Fencl, Jörg Rieckermann, Petr Sýkora, David Stránský, Vojtěch Bareš

2nd Edition | 2008
Metals pollution tracing in the sewerage network using the diffusive gradients in thin films technique
P. Thomas

1st Edition | 2005
Sampling for representative micropollutant loads in sewer systems
C. Ort, W. Gujer