On the first week of April, the Connected River Partners met in the city of Nijmegen (Netherlands) for one of their two annual face-to-face meetings. The meeting was organized by the municipality of Nijmegen, the project’s host partner, which is piloting an experimental area around the Spiegel Waal.
This secondary arm of the Waal River was created as part of the major Dutch infrastructure project “Room for the River” (Room for the River). As part of Connected River, the municipality is conducting experiments to avoid conflicts of use on this part of the river, which is heavily used by sports and leisure activities. Consultation between the various users is necessary to ensure the safety of everyone in the area. The meeting was an opportunity for the other project partners to discover the pilot site, meet some of the local players and visit the beautiful city of Nijmegen.
Site visits included a walking tour of the Nijmegen pilot zone, a pilot-led boat tour of the Nijmegen-Arnhem port, and first-aid training with the local volunteer rescue brigade.
During workshops led by Innovalor Advies, Antwerp Management School and Logistics Initiative Hamburg, guests from the different pilot areas worked together on how to take their experiments forward, sharing their challenges and solutions.
The Connection and Reflection Group also met on this occasion, extending the exchanges begun in Antwerp in September 2024 (Connected River project: Consortium Group Meeting in Antwerp – AIVP). AIVP invited representatives from the Seine and Rhine river basins to discover the innovative approaches implemented in the Connected River project. Carola Hein, Léa Kayrouz and Conor Hunter (Technical University of Delft) led workshops on the Serious Game and their “Water Values” approach, which aroused great interest among participants.
