What?
AquaLinks Research and Implementation (Pty.) Ltd:
- links water engineering with water management
- links Southern African waters with initiatives from The Netherlands / EU
- started in January 2017 as an initiative by Dr.ir. Marieke de Groen, in April registered as ‘AquaLinks Research and Implementation Pty. Ltd.’;
- realises the importance of getting facts and perceptions from many different people before strategic, tactical or operational decisions are made;
- is not only about knowledge. It is also about experience, understanding, common sense and insight. And about doing it together!
Why?
Relevance – AquaLinks wants to make a relevant contribution to water management in Southern Africa, and to capacity building of water management in Southern Africa.
Optimism – AquaLinks is founded on the believe that there are many opportunities to make a positive contribution to water management in Southern Africa. Together we can.
Understanding – AquaLinks wants to continuously grow the understanding of the contents and processes and the challenges in water management in Southern Africa, in a neo-generalist way; linking the specialisms of hydrology and hydraulics, to other disciplines, to the challenges the client faces and to the different needs of the society. AquaLinks wants to link different people, different viewpoints, different techniques, different processes to increase understanding by the different stakeholders and roleplayers involved. This is its added value and its inspiration.
How?
“Wisdom is like a Baobab, no one individual can embrace it” (West-African saying)
Creating Baobab-wisdom
Water management decisions typically need inputs from many different disciplines, stakeholders, roleplayers and need to be made in an integrated way. The challenge is that at the beginning of a water related decision making process, it is not yet known whose piece of wisdom is most needed. AquaLinks offers the following services. Small projects can have great relevance (and can make procurement easier).
- A workshop with a fixed budget reserved for the participation of experts (through knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense) in many disciplines and from different walks of life. Workshop facilitation and workshop reporting are included. This can also help to assist an already appointed team.
- A desktop study that uses sources of many different disciplines, through interviews or reading and sets you on the right track to find who next to consult or what the critical decisions are to make.
- Leading a team or task in a water management project. AquaLinks can be part of your team from the proposal stage onwards.
- Urban Rivers – Linking to lost opportunities – Together with FourthElement and EcoPulse, AquaLinks formed an alliance to tackle challenges on Urban Rivers. Marieke would help in creating Baobab-wisdom here, by facilitating the processes to bring the inputs of different stakeholders and different experts together. See joint leaflet.
- Peer review / peer assistance. Sometimes the Client needs a second opinion or sometimes as a Consultant you wish you could get some advice. There are different ways of doing this: a review of a product in hydrology / hydraulics / water management, a talk to generate some ideas or to get the right questions asked to find out for yourself, an ‘intervision’ session.
Becoming as wise as the Baobab
The Baobab tree is storing water in its trunk to survive harsh drought conditions. To become as Southern Africa water sensitive, we need good climate and river basin information and we can make use of smart tools to manage water (save, store, transport, clean). AquaLinks is involved in Smart climate change adaptation, using weather observation to inform operational and tactical decision making. See page Trans-African HydroMeteorological Observatory for the 8 weather stations in Johannesburg that AquaLinks is managing.
Who?
Dr.ir. Marieke de Groen is the owner-director. Marieke is a civil engineer who graduated with an MSc in river hydraulics followed by a PhD in hydrology (MSc cum laude Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, 1995; PhD, Delft University of Technology and UNESCO IHE Institute for Water Education, 2002). Since 2001, she has been a consultant, assisting in decision making processes in water management involving public and private sector stakeholders and role players and always diverse disciplines.
Nosipho Dlamini is in 2024 intern of AquaLinks. Nosipho Dlamini is at the same time starting her PhD on the water, energy and food nexus and climate change. She is an agricultural engineer from the University of Kwazulu-Natal by training, with a broad interest and has already proven to be an efficient worker! She will stay at AquaLinks until end of November 2024 after which she will pursue her PhD full time.
As per the intentions of AquaLinks to support people to follow their passion, we support people entering the job market and have succeeded so far to assist them with pursuing their passion for water and climate change adaptation.