Every 3rd year the Sewer Systems and Processes Working Group under the IWA specialist group on Urban Drainage (Joint IAHR/IWA) holds a conference, the “Sewer processes and networks” conference, also called the SPN. The last of these conference, the SPN 8, was held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and organized by Jeroen Langeveld from TU Delft. A total of 103 participants were present at that conference with a total ex-penditure of 71,854 euro (and a total income of 51,830 euro).

The next SPN conference, the SPN 9, is planned to be held 27-30 August, 2019, Aalborg, Denmark. We expect a slightly higher number of attendees (125). The conference economy is guaranteed by Aalborg University, and might result in a slight deficit which will be covered by Aalborg University.

Short about the conference content
Although the conference mainly aims at communicating the latest scientific developments in the field of sewer processes and networks, in the past the attendance of practicing engineers has shown to be effective in the sense that exchange of knowledge and experience between researchers and practice is stimulated. In order to underline the virtues of being a specialist conference there are no parallel tracks so as to allow all attendants to participate in discussions.

The main themes for the conference are:
• Sewer system impacts (environmental, flooding, health, odour)
• In-sewer processes (e.g. chemical- and biochemical processes, sediment transport, etc.)
• Design, re-design and operational issues
• Monitoring and associated technologies
• Inspection techniques to obtain information on the functioning of sewer systems
• Emerging Issues and new technologies related to sewers
These topic areas have been selected to encompass all the scientific and technical areas (physical/chemical and biological processes, operation, monitoring and management) that are important for sewer networks. The topics cover pure scientific topics as well as more technical fields of interest, such as sewer asset manage-ment and inspection techniques.