From 04 to 06 July, ifak hosted a project workshop of the German-Israeli water research project CLUWAL. Within the CLUWAL project, which is jointly funded by the research ministries of both countries (BMBF, MOST), simulation-based assessment methods are 
developed which will allow municipalities and water assocation to carry out assessments of their water systems according to social, economic and ecological aspects of sustainability. These will contribute to a better management of scarce water resources. In a close cooperation of the researchers from Israel (research group of Prof. Eran Friedler of Technion - Israel Institute of Technology) and from Germany (Department "Water and Energy" of ifak; Project leader: Dr Manfred Schütze), new modules, focussing on the balance between availability and demand of resources, for simulation and visualisation are developed and linked to evaluation routines, which will allow the evaluation of water systems according to criteria defined by stakeholders.
During the workshop, Prof. Friedler and Dr Ben David of Technion reported on the application of methods of the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) and of Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) on water systems, whilst Dr Schütze and Dr Alex of ifak provided an overview of the new simulation modules and of the integration of mathematical optimisation routines supporting planning and operation of urban water systems. M.Sc. Förster of ifak gave a report from a status seminar on LCA applications in various projects of the BMBF funding measure WaVE, which was recently held at ifak.
Dr Gunkel of BMBF's project management agency FZK, responsible for many water-related research projects funded by BMBF. provided insights into the long-standing successful German-Israeli water research programme.