Professor of Hydroinformatics at Polytech Nice-Sophia – University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France, since 1997; President of Polytech Nice-Sophia for two consecutive five-year mandates; initiator in 2012 of the Tianjin International Engineering Institute (TIEI) at Tianjin University (TJU), China, the first Chinese institution accredited in engineering education by the French Government; and one of the founders of the Asia Water Council (AWC); Professor Philippe Gourbesville has an extensive and rich international experience and, as the new IAHR President, is committed to bringing his dynamism, experience, and international network to continue the development of the association. 

IAHR interviews Professor Philippe Gourbesville on the occasion of his appointment as new IAHR President.

Professor Gourbesville, can you please share with members your vision for the association as the new IAHR President?

IAHR has been the place for excellence in hydraulic research since 1935. The initial objective of the new association was to promote international cooperation in hydromechanics and its application to hydraulic engineering. At that time, improving and consolidating knowledge were priorities for supporting the industrial development of hydropower, navigation, and aeronautics. Over the past decades, accompanying the evolution of the hydraulic sector and the demands of modern societies, IAHR has expanded its expertise fields to encompass hydro-environment issues by promoting innovative research and engineering solutions. With this continuous evolution, IAHR has federated and consolidated, through its members’ community, a unique and vivid set of expertise and competencies able to deliver the most advanced research results, and at the same time, to take part in most of the major water engineering projects at the worldwide scale.

Today water challenges require the development of a holistic approach that encompasses water uses, hydro-environment preservation, and water-related hazards mitigation. Obviously, addressing the complexity of the water-related processes demands investment in fundamental knowledge but also revisiting the water management principles and the current engineering practices to build more resilient communities. IAHR is the place for innovation. The association gathers all the components for formulating and promoting actively innovative and disruptive solutions that can contribute to answering some of the major challenges we are facing. IAHR should actively promote the innovative solutions of its members and be a voice on major challenges to which water experts can contribute.

Within the context of needed innovation and developments, IAHR should welcome students and young professionals. In addition to enthusiastic research topics where all the emerging methods can be mobilized, the water sector is facing the challenge of digitalization with its myriad opportunities for new approaches and solutions. The demand for water professionals in developing countries is tremendous and local capacity-building institutions are frequently not able to cope with the needs of the operational and economic sectors. As at the initial stage of IAHR, cooperative training courses, workshops, seminars, … should be offered on-site and online with the objective of consolidating local competencies. In addition to water-related topics, IAHR should also assist and advise its young members on their professional life strategies including entrepreneurship and start-up development. The participation of the young professional is vital for our association, and it should be a priority for all members to ensure that they are transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next.

We are in a time of great water challenges. How do you see IAHR’s role and contributions to meet these challenges?

The water challenges we are facing today are totally related to the major challenges facing our societies. Climate change adaptation and mitigation, carbon neutrality, the energy-food-nature nexus, and water hazards management are the questions we should address with a holistic approach. Since 1935, IAHR has welcomed a community of researchers and practitioners from the water sector who are willing to develop and promote solutions for better water management. Our community has the responsibility to deliver scientific results that could lead to innovations and good practices to solve those challenges. In fact, most of our activities already implicitly address those topics and we must make our contributions more visible to practitioners and to decision makers alike. Developing technical solutions is only one part of IAHR’s mission. The IAHR community must also question engineering practice. Some concepts have demonstrated their limits, and it is essential to develop a new engineering culture based on a holistic approach; this is the only way to properly address these multifaced challenges. The digital transformation is deeply impacting all water-related activities and represents an opportunity to revise most of our practices and processes with the ambition of generating higher efficiency with fewer resources. The space for innovation is tremendous and the way to address water issues will be totally transformed during the next decade. IAHR should engage continuous dialogs and exchanges with professionals from the water sector and must be seen as the platform where engineering practice is discussed. 

In addition to the creation of solutions, the training of qualified professionals remains a major challenge in numerous regions where competences are deeply lacking. IAHR should engage actions to support and offer education and training especially for our younger members. The Young Professional Networks are a unique initiative of IAHR and the network has to be widely used to promote the new concepts and methods that are used for addressing the global water challenge.

Strengthening alliances, promoting innovation and interdisciplinarity, is key when it comes to solving the world's water crisis. How do you expect the Association to enhance synergies and with what actors?

The water challenges require a holistic approach that will provide innovative solutions based on scientific results and promoting resilient societies. The production of knowledge is the DNA of IAHR and our community has created numerous major achievements over the last decades. Those results have been turned into technical innovations in numerous cases and have contributed to improve engineering solutions. The operational implementation of innovative solutions requires an active interface with practitioners who are aware of the alternative technical possibilities and practices. At the same time, dialoguing with practitioners is essential to collect needs and identified challenges for developing consistent R&D road maps. This communication principle should be implemented with national professional organisations of the water sectors and with thematic international organisations that are looking for innovation within their field of competence. Joint working groups and mutual participation within technical committees are some of the obvious actions that should be implemented.

Water is key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. With many countries not on track to doing so, how do you think the association can contribute to improving this situation?

The United Nations have introduced the SDGs to speed up the development of a healthier, more equitable world. The ultimate target is to build resilient societies. Within the 17 identified objectives, SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) is the most interconnected of the other objectives: it is directly connected to eight SDGs and indirectly to the other eight SDGs. Obviously, the solutions for addressing the water issues should be articulated along with the other objectives so as to be sustainable. Meeting the targets setup for 2023 for drinking water, sanitation and hygiene will require a major effort – essentially a fourfold acceleration in the pace of progress. Even if this effort is engaged, by 2030, 1.6 billion people will still lack safely managed drinking water, 2,8 billion people will lack safely managed sanitation, and 1.9 billion people will lack basic hand hygiene facilities. The UN Water Conference has identified five key accelerators: finance, data and information, capacity development, innovation, and governance. The IAHR community should integrate those accelerators and vigorously contribute with solutions and good practices. IAHR already has proposals to formulate and to promote. I have no doubt that our community will be keen to take an active part in this international effort to reach the 2030 targets.

We thank you for your time and wish you much success during your tenure as the new IAHR President.