The Battle of the Water Futures 🚰
Designing the next generation of urban water systems
Coming soon! 🔜
The highly anticipated ‘Battle of the Water Networks’ is back with a new challenge for the water community. This competition will be hosted at the 4th International Joint Conference on Water Distribution Systems Analysis and Computing and Control in the Water Industry (WDSA/CCWI 2026), taking place in Paphos, Cyprus, from May 18-21, 2026.
This competition embodies the core mission of Water-Futures and the theme for WDSA/CCWI 2026: “Designing the next generation of urban water (and wastewater) systems.”
The objective is to design and operate a water distribution system over a long-term horizon under deep uncertainty, with interventions applied in stages. For the first time, this challenge features a staged-design approach, unobservable and unknown uncertainties, and incorporates elements of policymaking and artificial intelligence. The solutions will be assessed using a transparent and inspectable open-source evaluation framework.
Participation rules 🚷
The competition is organized as an invited session at the WDSA/CCWI 2026 conference. The process and timeline for the battle are independent of the standard conference submission workflow.
There is no requirement to also submit a regular conference paper to participate in the competition.
Keep in mind that:
- Participants may submit a solution individually or as part of a team, but each person can only be included in one team.
- If your team submits a solution, at least one team member must register for the conference and present your work at the event.
- Each team is required to submit a short paper (4–6 pages) describing the methodology used.
More information about the conference and the regular paper submission are available on the conference website.
Important dates 🗓️
- 1st September 2025 Competition announcement. Website launch.
Subscribe for updates and let us know if you are interested in participating!
Stage 1
- 24th November 2025 Competition begins: Instructions and first batch of data available.
- 19th December 2025 Abstract submission deadline
- 9th January 2026 Abstract acceptance notifications
- 27th February 2026 First stage solution submission deadline.
Stage 2
- 2nd March 2026 Second batch of data available.
- 20th March 2026 Second stage solution submission deadline.
Stage 3
- 23rd April 2026 Third batch of data available.
- 10th April 2026 Final deadline for submission of:
- Third stage solution.
- Short paper.
- 18th May 2026. Conference starts! 🎉
Stay updated 📣
Want to be notified when the competition launches?
Send an email to: battlewaterfutures@kwrwater.nl with the subject “Competition Updates”.
We’ll share the calendar with you and keep you informed as soon as:
- Competition guidelines are published.
- Evaluation modules are released.
- Submission deadlines are approaching.
Do you have questions?
Send us an email or open a question on the Q&A section of the GitHub repository.
This competition is organized by the Water-Futures team. More details about the organising commitee are coming soon!
⭐ Star this repository to stay up-to-date!
Explore our projects on GitHub and learn more about our team and work on our website.
Water-Futures has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 951424).