project

GRROW – Generational and Radical Rethinking of the Water Sector

What should the future water sector look like? In what respect does the sector need to radically reinvent itself, and what are the things that we really need to keep? That is the question being addressed in GRROW by people who can play an active role in the future Dutch and Flemish water sector: water professionals and researchers under the age of 35.

The drinking water provision in the Netherlands and Flanders can today be seen as very reliable and safe, but there is an increasing awareness that the challenges, like those related to climate change and urbanisation, are mounting. To be able to continue supplying drinking water over the long term, drinking water utilities are being forced to rethink their current practices. However, rethinking and adapting complex systems such as the drinking water infrastructure represent a tough challenge at both the technical and institutional levels. For example, the costs of the infrastructure are often anchored in the future, and these structures are designed to be maintained and perpetuated for decades. As a result, fundamentally rethinking the system structure is often both administratively and technically difficult.

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Video – 02:32
GRROW Generational Radical Rethinking of the Watersector

Young drinking water professionals

In order to rethink and to look to the future from a new perspective, GRROW focuses on the youngest generation in the drinking water sector. Working with young (< 35 years old) researchers and drinking water professionals, we decipher the principles or paradigms upon which our current thinking about water and drinking water are founded. By jointly rethinking and evaluating these principles, we can determine which elements we want to cherish and preserve, and which need to be reassessed in the future. With this approach we connect young professionals, not only with each other but also with the future of the sector.

Joint design with the GRROW methodology
A four-step methodology has been developed for GRROW:
• comprehend the current system and identify its most important underlying design principles;
• jointly reassess these design principles and determine what the design criteria should be for the future;
• redesign the water system on the basis of these design criteria, and
• interpret these results and make them suited for implementation in practice.

By going through these four steps in 2022-2023 and 2024-202, GRROW developed radical new visions and images for the future of water and drinking water. In 2023, for instance, the GRROW project elaborated three future images for the drinking water chain and, in 2025, a GRROW lexicon for the Dutch water language.

Download the visualisations of the GRROW future images (2023):

  1. Collectieve keten
  2. Water op maat
  3. Lozers zijn losers

Download the GRROW lexicon for the Dutch water language (2025):
• GRROW woordenboek voor de Nederlandse Watertaal

More information?

Read more about GRROW in this report and scientific publication about this project, or send an email to grrow@kwrwater.nl.