“Summit Forum on Urban Water Environment”, one of the serial activities of CAE 2011 “High-End Forum on International Engineering Science and Technology Development Strategy” was held in Harbin from September 17 to 19, 2011. The forum was hosted jointly by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs and co-organized by the Civil Engineering, Hydraulic and Architecture Engineering Academic Division of CAE, Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) and the State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resources and Water Environment. More than 400 experts and scholars, home and abroad, attended the forum. The opening ceremony of the forum was chaired by CAE Member Ren Nanqi, also Vice President of Harbin Institute of Technology, in which Fan Daiming, Vice President of CAE, Zhao Kefei, Member of the Standing Committee of Heilongjiang Provincial Party Committee, and Wang Shuguo, President of Harbin Institute of Technology, made speeches.

The forum was divided into two sections. Section one is the presentation section, in which eight renowned foreign experts from the USA, the Netherlands and Canada, as well as six CAE Members, namely, Qian Yi, Li Guibai, Zhang Jie, Ren Nanqi, Tang Hongxiao and Qu Jiuhui, gave academic reports that were warmly received by audience. These academic reports covered areas like theory and technology related to sustainable development of urban water, roles and experiences of new technologies in solving urban water problems, future development trend of cities as well as development of water environment, and so on.

The second section of the forum is “High-End Seminar”, which was co-chaired by CAE Members Ren Nanqi and Qian Yi, Prof. Bruce Rittmann from Arizona State University, also Member of NAE (National Academy of Engineering, USA), as well as Prof. Lisa Alvarez-Cohen from University of California, Berkeley, also Member of NAE. In the nearly four hours for discussion, participating scholars and experts carried out heated and lively discussion as to issues like the healthy cycle of urban water, urban water quality protection, etc., who reached a number of agreements after a general review of the experiences and lessons of developed countries in these aspects, as well as exchanges of thoughts on China’s urban water development trend in the coming five to ten years.

During the forum, delegates and experts also visited the State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resources and Water Environment, and the HIT Museum. (By Tang Haiying and Feng Yujie, October 2011; translated by Liu Chang)