“There are very interesting opportunities for innovation in the water industry”
The water and wastewater sector faces many challenges, requiring both new technologies and new ways of working. But many water and wastewater organizations are small and lack sufficient resources for development and innovation. Our new PhD student Emelie Ekström wants to find out how they can learn from each other – for a stronger and more innovative water industry.
– I hope to find examples from smaller water and wastewater organizations that are doing great things but may not spread this as widely as those with greater resources do.
Our PhD students are an important part of our research program and the work we do. So far, eleven PhD students have worked within the program, and this year we have the honor of introducing two more. The first to introduce herself a little more closely is Emelie Ekström, a doctoral student in our project on innovation capacity in water and wastewater companies. Emelie Ekström started her PhD at KTH in April this year. She has previously studied Industrial Economics with a focus on Energy Systems and Sustainable Development, attended a trainee program and worked as a sustainability consultant for two years before she now found her way back to KTH.
How did you become interested in water?
-I would say during my thesis in spring 2021. Me and a friend, Sonia Sivadasan, wrote our thesis on smart water meters, and how the possibility of implementing these in Swedish households looks like – both which enablers that facilitate the process and which obstacles that complicate the process. While working on the thesis, I realized how interesting and special the water industry is: it is a monopoly, it is a conservative industry with good reason – they work with the most important food we have so it is quite understandable that you do not want to experiment wildly, and there seems to be a very large community where you share successes and setbacks with each other! This means that there are very interesting conditions for innovation and innovation dissemination, which is what I will look at more closely. How do different water and wastewater organizations around the country conduct their research and development? Are there any best practices, and can other water and wastewater organizations learn from this? Questions like these are what I will be looking at initially in my project, Innovation capacity in water and wastewater organizations: what is best practice?
What do you hope to achieve, and what do you want the project to contribute to?
-The water and wastewater sector is facing many challenges, both in Sweden and globally – such as the effects of climate change, ageing infrastructure and urbanization. To address these challenges, the sector will need to embrace new technologies and new ways of working. However, many water and wastewater organizations are small and focused on day-to-day operations and therefore often lack the time and resources to invest in research, development and innovation. This project aims to find best practices for managing research and development by studying pioneers, and then see if this can be learned from for other water and wastewater organizations. In this way, the project can hopefully lead to more water and wastewater organizations being able to deal with these issues effectively, which in turn can lead to an innovative and strong industry that can provide high-quality water to everyone for a long time to come.
What I enjoy most about the project is finding good examples of how water and wastewater organizations around the country work. You hear a lot about the big water and wastewater organizations and what they do, but I hope I can find examples of smaller water and wastewater organizations that also do great things but may not spread this as widely as those with greater resources do.