ABOUT
CentrEau, the Quebec Water Management Research Center, is a Quebec cluster of researchers who are experts in water management. It brings together researchers and graduate students from 12 different establishments. It is funded by the Strategic Cluster program of the Fonds de recherche du Québec, secteur Nature et technologies.
Mission
CentrEau brings together and coordinates the driving forces in research and innovation in Quebec to develop and transfer scientific knowledge to improve the management and governance of inland waters*. CentrEau offers a rewarding, diverse and inclusive training and career development framework.
*Continental water: All surface or underground waters found inland, which are not seas or oceans.
Vision
CentrEau is the Quebec reference for creating and mobilizing knowledge on inland water so that, through responsible use, it remains available for future generations.
Organizational values
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Collaboration : The multiple facets of water management require bringing together specialists from diverse backgrounds. CentrEau's actions are driven by open-mindedness, collegiality, solidarity and inclusion, and are based on the sharing of knowledge, resources and information.
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Responsible commitment : CentrEau ensures that all its members are committed and act ethically and responsibly in achieving the group's mission.
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Creativity : Innovation comes from the creativity of researchers. CentrEau provides a framework that promotes the development of sustainable solutions to water issues.
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Excellence : CentrEau encourages and values excellence and leadership in all aspects of the group, from the co-creation of projects to the dissemination of the resulting knowledge.
Added value of CentrEau
CentrEau, as an inclusive group, stimulates collaboration between its members on large-scale projects by offering an interdisciplinary, interinstitutional and intersectoral networking space. It facilitates access to data and the sharing of research infrastructures. It promotes the work of its members. It creates a place for exchange with users and research stakeholders and, through the transversality of its research axes, offers complementarity with other research groups. Thanks to these collaborations and its programs, it offers an environment conducive to the multi-skills training of the next generation of professors, students and research staff (graduate students and technical and research staff are also called “highly qualified personnel” or HQP).
CentrEau offers academia access to a pool of qualified specialists and the opportunity to get involved in major projects, in addition to participating in workshops or other activities.
CentrEau offers water professionals and its municipal, governmental and industrial partners access to a pool of scientific knowledge to help them address the issues they face.
CentrEau offers civil society accessible and verified knowledge to ensure its democratization and use.
History
CentrEau was first created at Université Laval on November 13, 1969, under the name Centre de recherches sur l'eau (CENTREAU). With a grant from the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources of Canada, CENTREAU quickly took off and contributed to the expansion of water research at Université Laval in addition to contributing to the training of water professionals. In 1971, the center already had 42 researcher members. CENTREAU already wanted to be, at the time, an interdisciplinary center which dealt with both pure sciences and social sciences and had a desire to turn towards the search for solutions to problems in developing countries. In 1976, the Cahiers de CENTREAU were launched. These notebooks constitute a collection of studies and their aim was to disseminate the work of researchers from Université Laval related to water. The center ceased operations in the mid-1980s.
With the creation of the water engineering study program and the scale of water research at Université Laval, it seemed only natural to relaunch this large research center in 2015 within Université Laval.
Then, faced with the obvious need for a unifying group on water management within the province, the center was expanded to cover all of Quebec and submitted a request for funding as a strategic cluster from the Fonds de recherche du québec (FRQ) in 2018. On April 1st, 2019, CentrEau was officially recognized as a strategic cluster on water management for the entire Quebec province. Thus, CentrEau now brings together a large number of co-researchers and students from establishments across the province of Quebec.
For its part, the Water Research Center at Université Laval has become c-EAU, one of the local chapters of CentrEau.