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The House of Water and Environment (HWE) is a Palestinian not-for-profit NGO that was established in the year 2004. HWE aims to promote practical research into the current and future state of water resources and the environment in Palestine and across the region. There is a need to combine different notions of social, technical and economic sustainability in order to achieve development outcomes that both provide for national development and help to achieve poverty reduction. HWE aims to address this need through mobilizing local and international networks and partnerships to promote a broader analysis of sustainable water resource development and better ‘governance’ of the resource.
Main Goals
- Act as a hub for technology knowledge and know-how for water and environmental information and best practices.
- Hold seminars, workshops, lectures and technical training courses on knowledge-sharing and capacity building.
- Develop simulation models to solve water and environmental problems both at the national and regional levels.
- Strengthen partnership with Palestinian Authority institutions through long-term cooperation.
- Offer advisory services to the Palestinian National Authority in designing projects and plans related to water resources and other environmental issues. HWE will also offer advice to local as well as international development organizations in preparing feasibility studies and evaluating existing and future projects and research.
- Help the Palestinian community through conducting research and studies to support the development of water and environmental strategies, decision support tools and plans that consider all possible technical, administrative, social and economic aspects.
- Conduct water and environmental research and development projects that improve water supply (including agriculture projects) and sanitation services (including solid waste) at the local Palestinian society with the aim to alleviate poverty in the Palestinian Society.
- Develop a scientific data bank for water and environment of Palestine.
Areas of work and scope of activities
HWE is working in three areas (with regard to water and environment):
1- Development.
2- Research.
3- Capacity Building and Training.
HWE offers a wide variety of services in water, sanitation and environmental engineering and science from the needs identification stage to the elaboration of tender documents, supervision of works and technical assistance. Also, HWE offers services in capacity building through providing training and awareness programmes.
HWE concentrates in its work on the urban areas of Palestine and therefore it has implemented a number of projects with the main Palestinian municipalities such as Nablus, Tulkarem, Ramallah, Salfit, Jericho and many others. The Palestinian rural sector is also important and therefore HWE coordinates activities to serve all the rural areas to have water supply and safe sanitation services.
HWE works closely with Newcastle University (UK) in research projects and Newcastle University is considered as a research supporter for HWE. HWE works also closely with many other international institutions and funding agencies such as UNESCO, ESCWA, CEDARE, UNU, USAID, DFID, AFD, GTZ, GWP, EUWI, JICA, ACSAD, BGR, Green Cross, EU, ASTF, AGFUND, etc.
HWE employs a team of more than 15 highly qualified experts and project managers in complementary disciplines who practice the latest in the state of the art techniques.
The chief asset of HWE is its human capital, comprising a research team and engineers of high qualification. The organization is especially distinguished by its GIS software experts who have participated in a number of projects that have used the program for data analysis and result illustration and dissemination. The wide range of expertise greatly strengthens the organization foundations. This expertise is not only limited to theoretical research but also extends to more practical field applications.
HWE is particularly strong in the fields of:
- Water resources development, planning and management.
- Water needs/demand studies.
- Socio-economic, tariff and financial studies.
- Access to water and poverty alleviation.
- Institutional and organizational studies.
- Integrated water resources management (IWRM).
- Watershed analysis and management.
- Rainfall variation and climate change.
- Groundwaters recharge including artificial recharge studies.
- Storm-water studies.
- Decision Support Systems (DSS).
- Hydrological monitoring including meteorological instrumentation.
- Groundwater assessment including exploration and geophysics.
- Vulnerability, risk and hazards mapping.
- Springs development, rehabilitation and protection.
- Groundwater wells siting, design, construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, development, testing, and putting into operation.
- Groundwater flow and pollution modeling and simulations.
- Saltwater intrusion and saline water upconing studies using numerical models.
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- Socio-economic, tariff and financial studies.
- Institutional and organizational studies and audits for sewage sector.
- Environmental protection.
- Environmental Impact Assessment.
- Sewage planning and development.
- Wastewater treatment.
- Small scale and on-site wastewater treatment.
- Solid waste and landfills.
- Treated wastewater re-use for agriculture.
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- Water conflicts and resolution.
- Management of shared water resources.
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- Food security studies.
- Irrigations methods.
- Agricultural best practices.
- The use of fertilizers and pesticides.
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- The study of unaccounted for-water.
- Main pipelines.
- Water distribution systems.
- Balancing tanks and storage reservoirs.
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- Technical assistance to operators of water and sewage utilities and hands-on training.
- Preliminary and detailed design of water supply systems, sewage systems, landfills, storm-water systems, irrigation systems, springs facilities and groundwater wells.
- Tender documents, tender evaluation and assistance during contract negotiation.
- Co-ordination, supervision and acceptance of works.
- Project management.
- Technical audits and expertise of water supply or sewerage systems, including computer modeling, block mapping, information system and GIS, customer management, instrumentation and equipment procurement.
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