Waterinfodag in Den Bosch brings together data professionals in the water sector

Change capability as a theme

The Water Info Day is a conference, exhibition and meeting day. Topics are all related to data and information management. For employees of water boards, Rijkswaterstaat, provinces, municipalities, drinking water companies, companies and students. This year, the theme was ‘The ability to change’ with four subthemes:

1. Data as a foundation for change
2. Digital transformation as a necessity for change capability
3. Implementations that contribute to change capability
4. Applications as examples of change capability

Five delegates of KWR, Nienke Meekel, Tessa Pronk, Alifta Ariestiwi, Fred Vreeswijk and Rene ter Haar, went to the Water Info Day and visited the booths in the exhibition and attended presentations. In addition, they arranged two sessions on behalf of KWR. One was a presentation of results of projects on identification of patterns in clustered monitoring data, Nienke and Tessa showed how clustering can reveal ‘calamities’ and trends in non-target screening (NTS) data and how clusters can help interpret the presence of substances in water. The other was a masterclass visualization. A good visualization can get a message across much more efficiently than other means. Participants got to work to design a visualization, after hearing the ‘do’s and don’ts’ in visualization. Many creative approaches were applied. Both sessions were full to capacity.

Data solutions at the water info day

With the help of the event app, the delegates could handpick from a broad range of captivating sessions. There were a substantial number of sessions scheduled simultaneously. These sessions revolved around digitization and data-driven work, with an emphasis on standards, IoT, robotics, and satellite data. Among others, Marcel Kotte, Irene van der Stap and Chris Lukken explained how the RWS monitoring program is put together with, among other things, NTS data. Koos Boersma and Jeroen Overbeek talked about the common infrastructure that the ‘Informatiehuis Water’ is building to accommodate the three data products that they make available for the watersector, for instance, water quality data. Hinne Reitsma and Peter de Rooij presented the data validation efforts done by ‘Informatiehuis Water’ for the ‘water quality portal’.