Project Summary

2010

The Sustainable Water Management Improves Tomorrow’s Cities’ Health (SWITCH) project was a major research partnership funded by the European Commission, with a budget exceeding €20 million, undertaking innovation in the area of integrated urban water management (IUWM). Rather than solely focusing on new research, the project aimed to put research into use across different aspects of the urban water cycle in order to improve integration and scaling-up impacts, and ultimately to achieve more sustainable urban water management. One of the focus cities was Belo Horizonte.

The focus on getting research into use had implications for the way in which SWITCH was structured as a project. First of all, it called for more integrated and inter-disciplinary research, trying to study water management from different angles, in its technological, hydrological, economic and governance aspects in an integrated way. In addition, the project sought to engage the relevant stakeholders and establish linkages between research providers, knowledge managers and research users through so-called learning alliances. It was intended that the learning alliance members would help to define the research agenda, participate in the research itself and to act as the main channel for dissemination and scaling up.

SWITCH started work in the second half of 2006 in Belo Horizonte and finished in 2010. The local aim was to provide further impetus to the change processes that were already underway towards more sustainable urban drainage and more joined-up water governance. The intervention logic of SWITCH aimed to build upon the changes that were already underway and to develop complementary activities of research, demonstration and capacity building. Learning alliances have played the integrating role in linking these together.