Last month, WaterRA Research Manager, Dr Hannah Sassi, attended the Sydney Water Innovation Festival (SWIF25), where the central message was clear: collaboration is essential to driving innovation—and the same is true for research.
Set against the backdrop of global uncertainty, the festival brought together voices from across the water sector and beyond to explore how shared challenges demand shared solutions. The key theme running through every session was that when we connect across disciplines and sectors, we spark better thinking, deeper research, and ultimately, stronger innovations that are more likely to be adopted and create lasting impact.
Bite-sized insights from SWIF25
- Innovation doesn’t always have to be groundbreaking—incremental improvements deserve recognition too.
- Shared problems benefit from shared perspectives.
- Diversity drives better solutions and is an invaluable factor to success.
- Sector-wide visibility can be a barrier— leaving many asking, “who’s doing what?”
- Storytelling is a powerful tool for sparking collaboration and scaling innovation.
- Strong networks (formal and informal) are crucial for accelerating ideas.
- Breaking big challenges down into smaller parts improves the chance of success.
- As Day 1 keynote speaker Lucy Luo put it: “You have to slow down to speed up.”
Spotlight session: AI in the water sector
A standout panel explored how artificial intelligence could transform the water industry. Panellists were cautiously optimistic, agreeing that while AI presents real opportunities for efficiency and upskilling, it must be adopted responsibly and strategically.
Jim Cooper (Arcadis) opened the session by comparing AI’s current phase to the early days of the internet: “I can’t think of a future role in the water sector that won’t use AI,” he said.
Highlights included:
- AI can lift productivity, freeing up time for people to focus on strategic tasks and developing specialised skills.
- Human roles will evolve—AI is here to assist and enhance, not replace.
- Governance is critical—responsible and environmentally sustainable adoption must be built on trust.
- People will drive adoption—trust, interest, and FOMO can all play a role in getting started.
- Start small— personal productivity tools like Copilot and Claude are practical entry points for day-to-day integration of AI.
- Training is key—upskilling the workforce, even in prompting AI tools, will ease the transition.
From our perspective at WaterRA, SWIF25 reinforced what we’ve always known: successful innovation doesn’t happen in silos. When researchers, utilities, technologists and communities come together to address collective challenges, we build the foundations for solutions that work—not just in theory, but in practice.
As always, collaboration is the most powerful tool we have.