The R&D joint project “Smart technologies for sustainable water management in urban catchments as key contributions to Sponge Cities (KEYS)” was financed with funds from Research for Sustainability – BMBF CLIENTII announcement “International partnerships for sustainable climate protection and environmental technologies and services”. . The joint project with a duration of 42 months began in August 2018. Eight German and eight Chinese partners worked successfully together in the KEYS consortium. In total, KEYS was active at four locations in China: Beijing, Shenzhen, Suzhou and Jinxi. Specifically, the KEYS project pursued the following three main objectives:
1) Technical optimization and design improvement of individual sponge city elements,
2) Designing a connected and intelligent sponge city infrastructure
3) Upgrade the "gray" urban drainage and wastewater treatment infrastructure
All project activities were carried out in close interaction with the Chinese scientific partners on site, particularly Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT, Shenzhen). All three focal points were comprehensively addressed and scientifically supported, some in large-scale technical demonstrations and case studies. Despite the corona pandemic that began in 2020, the joint project was successfully continued and remaining work was carried out in Germany. In December 2021, the project results were presented at an online final conference. At this conference, the project partners presented the results achieved in KEYS in focus 4 “Demonstrations & Case Studies”. These results are also described in detail and clearly in a brochure available to interested specialists in English and Chinese.
In addition to the Leibniz University of Hannover, German project partners were:
- Kompetenzzentrum Wasser Berlin gGmbH, Berlin
- DAHLEM Beratende Ingenieure GmbH & Co. Wasserwirtschaft KG, Essen
- Steinhardt GmbH Wassertechnik, Taunusstein
- NIVUS GmbH, Eppingen
- MARTIN Systems GmbH, Berlin
- AKUT Umweltschutz Ingenieure Burkard und Partner, Berlin
- BPI Hannover – Verworn Beratende Ingenieure, Hannover
