Urban Water 2016 is the 3rd International Conference on the Design, Construction, Maintenance, Monitoring and Control of Urban Water Systems. The meeting is reconvened following the success of the first two conferences, that took place in the New Forest, home of the Wessex Institute in 2012, and in the Algarve, Portugal, 2014.

As our cities continue to expand, their urban infrastructures need to be re-evaluated and adapted to new requirements related to the increase in population and the growing areas under urbanization. This conference considers these problems and deals with two main topics: water supply systems and urban drainage. Topics such as contamination and pollution discharges in urban water bodies, as well as the monitoring of water recycling systems are currently receiving a great deal of attention from researchers and professional engineers working in the water industry. Water distribution networks often suffer substantial losses which represent wastage of energy and treatment. Effective, efficient and energy saving management is necessary in order to optimize their performance.

Sewer systems are under constant pressure due to growing urbanization and climate change, and the environmental impact caused by urban drainage overflows is related to both water quantity and water quality. Architects and town planners are also aware of the importance of the interaction between urban water cycles and city planning and landscaping. Management of all these aspects requires the development of specialised computer tools that can respond to the increased complexity of urban water systems. The conference will also discuss legal and regulatory aspects, in addition to more technical problems.

Papers presented at this conferences, as all other meetings run by the Wessex Institute of Technology, are archived in the Institute eLibrary (www.witpress.com/elibrary), and permanently available to the international community.