Activities included:
- Delivering a presentation on applying the Blue Green concept in urban development in Water and City Conference, Yazd
- Preparing a general Terms of Reference for applying Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) to urban development (retrofitted or new)
- Contributing to interview questions for Taleghan City on fringe rights and usage, environmental and water quality issues
- Writing the introduction of the UNESCO book Advances in urban water management in arid and semi-arid regions, which summarises chapters on water management submitted by academics from around the world.
- Provided feedback and comments on each chapter
- Preparing a presentation on WSUD devices for Esfahan conference, case studies, applicability in arid and semi-arid regions, design criteria and costs. This involved reading literature and manuals on each device.
- Proofreading the Centre’s leaflet, brochure, colleagues’ work and miscellaneous documents
“From day one at the Centre, I was on boarded to active projects related to my interest in Blue-Green Infrastructure from my MSc. Less than two weeks into the internship, I travelled to Yazd to deliver a presentation on the Blue-Green concept in the Water and City Conference. This opportunity allowed me to practice delivering presentations in front of experts in the field. In addition to this, I produced a generalized Terms of Reference for applying Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) to a city, which required reading into WSUD design guidelines and writing a ToR based on those for other projects, such as Environmental Impact Assessment projects. For the Taleghan Blue Plan project, I worked with my colleagues on devising interview questions for Taleghan citizens and authorities in order to understand perceptions of river rights and water issues that the city is currently suffering from. Though my participation in this project was somewhat limited, my wider reading and discussion with colleagues increased my knowledge of water challenges in Iran.
Following from this, I researched extensively on applying WSUD to arid and semi-arid regions, including their corresponding costs, case studies, applicability and design criteria. I produced a presentation to summarize my findings, which will be used in the Second Water and Wastewater Science and Engineering Conference in Esfahan, November 2018. This was a great opportunity to build on what I had learnt from my MSc thesis.
In addition, I have contributed to a proposed UNESCO book Advances in Urban Water Management in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions. Here, I thoroughly read through each chapter submitted by academics in the water field from around the world and provided some feedback for each. Based on these chapters, I wrote an introductory chapter summarizing the concepts and main findings. Summarizing these chapters increased my own knowledge of existing and upcoming water management strategies for arid and semi-arid regions. Aside from the academic work I undertook during my internship, I assisted the Centre in proofreading their leaflet, my colleagues’ work and miscellaneous documents. The internship lasted just over 8 weeks, between 1 September to 24 October 2018. Overall this has been an unforgettable experience for me on both professional and personal levels. I was able to explore various cities in Iran and observe the culture that I had always been interested in”
