Strengthening educational programs to foster water sensitive cities leaders (Project D4.1)

Overview

The ambition of the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC) is to play a critical and catalytic role in reshaping how urban design and urban water are viewed and managed with respect to one another.
This is necessarily a multi-scale agenda across different sectors and disciplines which will require the development of capacity in urban planning and water professionals from a wide range of government, utility, consulting and community bodies.

The project aims to develop a set of professionally targeted postgraduate Master level modules, programs and short courses aimed at building the capacity of emerging urban leaders to stimulate and drive processes of innovation toward the realisation of water sensitive cities.

Key outcomes

This project will provide a pathway for translating CRCWSC’s research insights and outcomes into interdisciplinary learning processes which build the relevant capacities of urban professionals to drive the implementation and delivery of innovations in urban water management, planning and design.

These learning processes will be delivered through new modules and programs within the mid-career professional Masters and postgraduate programs offered by the International WaterCentre and UNESCO-IHE, and through targeted short courses that are based on those modules.

Outputs associated with the project will include:

• an assessment of the knowledge and skills needs of professionals from Australia, the Netherlands and a range of Asian cities in relation to their capacity for driving innovation toward water sensitive city outcomes, to be released by the end of 2014;
• market research assessment of different education and short course topics delivered in different ways (accredited, non-accredited, online, face to face, half day to multi day) at different levels of cost and interactivity;
• a standardised curriculum for a range of market tested, professionally targeted postgraduate Masters level modules and short courses, each with a set of teaching materials; and
• a syllabus for a new standalone Masters program or route within an existing program, comprising the new modules plus others as informed by the knowledge and skills needs assessment.