The Riobase project of the Asset Management and Data Science research groups of HZ University of Applied Sciences is one of eight nominees for the WOW Prize.
There were 31 entries for the platform WOW's biennial prize. "It is an honorable stage for projects that bring innovation and improvement to civil engineering through extraordinary collaboration," said the national network for road, waterway and waterway managers.
Data Science lector Mischa Beckers is pleased with the nomination. "It's great that we are among the last eight," he said. In Riobase, the HZ and the SAZ+ partnership (Scheldestromen Water Board, Evides Water Company and the thirteen Zeeland municipalities) have created a system to make sewer management simpler, more efficient and effective for small municipalities. "On all sides, it turns out that this is a perfect translation of practical research. We validated the findings with two other municipalities and the system was then deployed to the remaining municipalities. In the background we were always available to those municipalities to help where needed and to think along. It's a very intensive collaboration, but everyone got hooked and stayed hooked. We are therefore really valorizing the knowledge developed."
Audience Award
The winner of the WOW Prize will be announced at the national WOW Day on Nov. 2. The winner of the jury prize will receive 10,000 euros. The jury consists of Lindy Molenkamp (director of Management and Implementation at the province of North Holland and board member of WOW), Eric van Duijn (team manager of the Living Environment Department at the municipality of Amersfoort and board member of WOW), Wendy Tan (researcher Wageningen University & Research), Els van Grol (director of Extraction and Purification at Vitens) and Willemien Bosch (director of Royal NLingenieurs). There is also a public prize that provides a cash prize of 5,000 euros. Voting for the various projects will be open from September. Keep an eye on the website and news reports for this.