Founded in 1837, almost along with the modern Greek state, NTUA is the oldest and one of the largest Technical Universities in Greece, consisting of approximately 9 Schools, 512 faculty members, 4.090 external collaborators, 23.914 students, 194 laboratories, 140 of which are certified. According to QS World Universities Ranking 2016, NTUA was the leading academic institution in Greece and the only one in the top 400 institutions worldwide, with the School of Civil Engineering placed at the 33rd position of the world’s best schools by specialty.

NTUA represented in DARWEN project by the Laboratory of Applied Hydraulics http://hydraulics.civil.ntua.gr/ is one of the earliest Laboratories in the School of Civil Engineering and belongs to the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering. It was established in 1963 and is located at the homonymous building of the Campus at Zografou. The Laboratory supports the undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the areas of fluid mechanics and hydraulics and provides specialized services regarding problems in environmental hydraulics and hydraulic structures to the public as well as to the private sector, such as Ministries, Public Power Co., water supply companies, consulting and construction companies etc. Research through diploma and postgraduate theses, doctoral dissertations and external research projects focuses on three main areas, (a) Environmental hydraulics (computational and experimental), (b) Open channel flow and hydraulic structures, (c) Groundwater hydraulics.

The Laboratory of Applied Hydraulics in collaboration with the Laboratory of Hydrology and Water Resources Utilization (which also belongs to the Department of Water Resources and Environment), have a strong research focus in the fields of hydrological analysis and simulation, assessment of water resources and management and hydro-informatics.

In more detail the two collaborating labs are active in the following research areas:

• Study, design and implementation of hydraulic water supply and irrigation networks.
• Development of integrated mathematical models for the simulation of the behavior of water systems (surface flows, enrichment of underground aquifers, etc.).
• Modeling of the operation of water supply systems and their individual components (extraction, storage, processing / quality and distribution).
• Management and processing of hydrological information.
• Development of predictive models, short-term and long-term, using computational fluid dynamics and artificial intelligence tools.
• Development of optimized water supply management strategies incorporating uncertainties and also taking into account the electricity component in the Water -Energy Nexus in order to protect water resources and reduce operating and maintenance costs.
• Development of algorithms for the simulation of operation and integration of production, treatment and water collection units in the water supply system, such as e.g. desalination, collection and rainwater treatment plants.