Jan Vreeburg PhD MSc

Jan Vreeburg is Principal Scientist in the Water Infrastructure team. Jan has a long history of research and development in the field of drinking water distribution infrastructure, and in implementing the results of this work in practice. He was, for instance, one of the fathers of the method for Reliability Assessment of drinking water supply, which is today embedded in the Drinking Water Act. Jan also developed the concept of self-cleaning distribution networks, which in 2007 was the subject of his PhD thesis at TU Delft; the same university where, 20 years earlier, he earned his MSc in Civil Engineering. Besides his work at KWR, Jan was earlier associated with TU Delft (2001-2012), where he set up the Drinking Water Infrastructure curriculum and also supervised a number of doctoral students. The concrete results of these activities include the SIMDEUM model (https://www.kwrwater.nl/tools-producten/simdeum/) and the Tap Water Sprinkler (https://www.waterleidingsprinkler.nl/). During 2012-2017, alongside his activities at KWR, Jan was associate professor at the Wageningen University, where he set up the curriculum for Urban Environmental Infrastructures, which brought together and integrated all the urban utility service infrastructures. Here the development started of a new concept for the collection of domestic wastewater: ‘Water Out, Shit In’. This involves the design of an efficient collection infrastructure that is 40-50% less costly than the existing one and has a better hydraulic performance: ‘Smaller Sewer Pipes’ (https://www.thegreenvillage.org/projects/smaller-sewer-pipes).