The Battle of the Water Futures
Dennis Zanutto, Christos Michalopoulos, Lydia Tsiami, André Artelt, Jasmin Brandt, Demetrios Eliades, Stelios Vrachimis, Stefano Alvisi, Valentina Marsili, Filippo Mazzoni, Panagiotis Smartzis, Barbara Hammer, Phoebe Koundouri, Marios Polycarpou, Dragan Savić
TL;DR
The Battle of the Water Futures tackles robust, long-horizon planning of a national water distribution network under deep uncertainty. It couples adaptive, three-stage decision making with a rich multi-actor model (utilities, municipalities, sources, pipes) and an open-source evaluation framework to benchmark policy and infrastructure choices in a synthetic Dutch context. The approach integrates climate, energy, and economic drivers with policy levers and investment decisions (including NRW mitigation and bond financing) while emphasizing financial viability, emissions, reliability, and equity. This open benchmark aims to advance robust, equitable, and low-emission urban water system design through transparent, repeatable experimentation.
Abstract
The highly anticipated 'Battle of the Water Networks' is back with a new challenge for the water community. This competition will be hosted at the 4th International Joint Conference on Water Distribution Systems Analysis and Computing and Control in the Water Industry (WDSA/CCWI 2026), taking place in Paphos, Cyprus, from May 18-21, 2026. This competition embodies the core mission of Water-Futures and the theme for WDSA/CCWI 2026: "Designing the next generation of urban water (and wastewater) systems." The objective is to design and operate a water distribution system over a long-term horizon under deep uncertainty, with interventions applied in stages. For the first time, this challenge features a staged-design approach, unobservable and unknown uncertainties, and incorporates elements of policymaking and artificial intelligence. The solutions will be assessed using a transparent and inspectable open-source evaluation framework.