The WWW-YES-2011 provisional programme

The WWW-YES-2011 workshop will take place from Monday 6 to Friday 10 June 2011 from 9:00 to 17:30 at Communauté d’Aglomération du Val de Bièvre CAVB (see first announcement). Except for Monday 6 June 2011, all scientific sessions and lunches will take place, in an informal way, within the meeting hall of this local institution. On Monday 6 June, all events will take place at Arcueil city hall.

1/ Official opening of the workshop (6 June 2011)

Within a short morning session open to hosting institutions, the CAVB, the Arcueil municipality and the Conseil General du Val de Marne (CG94), the 11th edition of the WWW-YES workshop will be officially opened and participants will briefly introduce themselves, their academic institution and their ongoing research activity.

2/ Oral presentations (6 to 9 June 2011)

Each participant has to prepare and upload prior to 4 April 2011 a 6-10 page manuscript (see upload procedure) following the suggested format.

Each participant has to prepare a 10 min scientific presentation, in English, on his / her research project and be ready for 30 min detailed scientific discussion during the workshop, also exclusively in English, chaired by the workshop participant in charge of reviewing his/her manuscript.

The oral presentation (ca. 10 slides) should especially focus on:

– The scientific context of the research subject,
– The research questions that are expected to be answered during the PhD preparation, together with their environmental justification,
– The field and/or lab and/or model methodologies that are currently or will be used, together with their justification for addressing the questions presented before,
– One or two major results obtained so far,
– The planned research activity till the end of the PhD (or after its termination, in the case of a PhD which is already finished),
– The significance and limitations of these methodologies for developing countries.

Workshop participants are reminded of the large diversity of background knowledge within their colleagues, i.e. from natural to human sciences: thus these oral presentations should be extremely clear and well illustrated, allowing non-specialists of the research field to understand the raised environmental questions and the applied methods.

Each participant will received a manuscript to review, using a referee report form: this review is expected to be filled and sent back prior to 26 April 2011 to Daniel Thevenot, who will then send these reports to the author of the refereed manuscript. Thus WWW-YES-2011 participants should be ready, after their oral presentation, to answer to comments and questions raised by his/her referee.

Since 2008, all participants are offered to publish their paper in an Open Source specific collection. Previous editions of the WWW-YES workshop are progressively published on specific HAL sub-collections.

A printed version of the proceedings draft version will be given to each participant upon arrival. In the meanwhile a light version of this document will be available on the web: due to file size limitations on this server, all photographs and numerous illustrations may have to be deleted.

3/ Field visit (Tuesday 7 June 2011 afternoon)

A half-day technical visit on urban water issues will be organised at several sites of Bièvre valley, close to Arcueil. The SIAVB will explain the river management upstream the highly urbanised part of the river where it becomes a domestic underground sewer. A visit of one of the hydraulic regulation lakes will follow. Finally participants will discover parts of the Bièvre River where it has been re-opened, in the middle of a newly designed park. This visit will be accompanied by senior scientist to ensure the transfer of knowledge and the discussion with the representatives of the local water authority.

4/ Public discussion on drinking water management (Tuesday 7 June 2011 evening)

In the evening of Tuesday 7 June, all WWW-YES-2011 participants are invited to take part to a public discussion session with institutions, associations and citizens of the Bièvre valley on the topic of "Drinking water management: results of an international survey conducted by young environmental scientists". This public discussion will take place at Jean Vilar picture theatre (few hundred meters from CAVB buildings at Arcueil) after a documentary film presentation in English on the Ganges River (Ganga Maya). Translation to/from English will be offered to the workshop participants, so that they understand the questions raised by the French public and are able to reply in English and be understood by the public.

Thus each selected participant will receive, an html link to an on-line survey questionnaire which should be filled prior to 4 April 2011 on a city of his/her choice (except for cities which have been surveyed by participants of past WWW-YES editions). For the same deadline, each participant should send to Daniel Thevenot 3 JPG picture files illustrating the drinking water equipment and/or problems on the selected city as well as a map of the country indicating the city location.

Three voluntary workshop participants will prepare an English summary presentation of the surveyed towns and present it orally to the public attending this meeting. During the discussion, workshop participants will be asked on the city which they will have selected for this survey or on general questions related to drinking water resource, production or distribution.

In order to prepare this public presentation and discussion, a rehearsal will be performed, in the presence of only WWW-YES-2011 participants, on Monday 6 June afternoon.

5/ Collaborative projects (7 - 10 June 2011 - half-day sessions)

At the start of the workshop, participants will be invited to build multidisciplinary groups of 4-5 persons. Each group will prepare a proposal for international scientific research, under the guidance of senior experts. The topics of these proposals are defined with the help of actors of decentralized cooperation in the field of water supply and sanitation, or with academic searchers.

For better understanding of such role game, this collective proposal preparation will be introduced by a short course on scientific proposal writing and accompanied by senior scientists who have all experienced European research projects.

Each collaborative research proposal will result both into a one-page ‘expression of interest’ distributed to participants and into an oral presentation and discussion with a panel of senior scientists and practitioners on the morning of Friday 10 June 2011. The aims of this exercise are to learn how to justify all aspects of an international research project and to help participants to possibly obtain a support for future environmental research projects during or after their PhD preparation.