IWA-ASPIRE Abstract Submission

Empowering tomorrow – smart water solutions for resilient communities.

Submitting an abstract for the IWA-ASPIRE Conference 2025 offers professionals in the water industry an exceptional chance to present their research, innovations, and best practices to a global audience of peers, policymakers, and practitioners. 

Presenting at ASPIRE not only provides exposure and credibility but also facilitates valuable networking opportunities, leading to potential collaborations, career advancements, and access to funding. Additionally, participation allows individuals to receive feedback from experts, refining their work for greater impact. By contributing to ASPIRE, individuals demonstrate their commitment to addressing global water challenges and fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration essential for achieving a water-secure future.

You have the opportunity to submit an abstract for either a poster or an oral presentation.

The Call for Abstracts is now Open

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Please click here to download the Abstract Guidelines.

Please click here to download the Abstract Template


Programme Elements

Keynote speakers, technical and thought leadership presentations, workshops, utility forum, regulators forum, exhibition, networking events, Young Water Professional events, technical tours, site visits, working holidays.


Below are the five main themes. Please note these themes are tentative and are subject to possible changes by the Technical Committee.

Empowering Tomorrow

  • Automation, digital transformation and digital twin technology
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning for WASH systems
  • Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), and remote management
  • Utility leadership models adapted to digitalization and AI
  • Workforce formation and adjustments to automation, AI and AR/VR
  • The “software component”: aspects of urban planning, financing, devolution and aggregation of services, particularly for sanitations.

Governance, Utility Management and the Enabling Environment

  • Utility Performance Management
  • New methods for Institution strengthening and creditworthiness appraisal of service providers
  • Data collection and management in support of evidence-based decision-making
  • Governance models focused on marginalized and under-served communities
  • Regulation as the engine to put laws into action
  • Economics and tariff setting
  • Current trends in financing and investment 

Smart Water Solutions

  • Smart networks (source – customer – discharge)
  • Practical approaches to decarbonisation of the water industry
  • Solar-power desalination and other uses of renewable energy
  • Enhancing data management to overcome fragmentation, declining data quality and lack of compatibility.
  • Promotion of water reuse (potable re-use, re-use for agriculture and industry)as part of the circular economy and resource recovery
  • Customer engagement: smart ways to overcome remaining gaps
  • New technical standards for water supply equipment and materials inside people’s homes
  • Affordable inputs for efficient outcomes
  • Rehabilitation over replacement
  • Successful innovation in the management of aquatic ecosystems
  • Shifting from “non-sewered sanitation “ to “water efficient sanitation systems”
  • Alternative options in the management of municipal drinking water and wastewater sludges
  • Opportunities at the interface of the water/wastewater management – energy nexus

Risks and Resilience

  • Dealing with emerging chemicals and microbes
  • Strengthening water safety planning and sanitation safety planning
  • Preparing for/dealing with the impact of extreme weather events on WASH systems
  • Promoting climate adaptation including climate resilient WASH infrastructure
  • Preparedness for seismic and volcanic activity, and for wildfires
  • Remediation, pollution control, managing pathways for microbial contamination
  • Nature based solutions and environmental management
  • Wastewater surveillance
  • Developments in the management of outfalls
  • Sustainability & the SDGs – research priorities in water and sanitation post-2030
  • Resilience to impacts of water and sanitation management on receiving waterways

Communities

  • Exploiting the potential of community-based/citizen science
  • Indigenous peoples’ relationship with water and their access to WASH services
  • Stewardship & conservation, and the links between rural and urban communities
  • Water for farming & industry
  • Environmental outcome focused
  • Post disaster community participation
  • Diversity, equity & inclusion
  • Meeting WASH needs of migrant populations
  • Settings specific WASH services (urban, small island states, WASH in schools and health care facilities
  • Water quality management as a One Water approach