Access to water in Brussels

This research project aims to provide insight into issues related to water security in Brussels.

Project HyPer (personal hygiene outside/without a home) attempts to increase visibility and better understand the problem of access to water in Brussels in the present day.

Still a poorly understood phenomenon, water security refers to individuals’ or households’ access to water for their basic needs (cooking, hygiene, laundry, and waste). It is mostly an issue for the most underprivileged and vulnerable populations, and is often compounded with other factors (poverty, debt, housing, energy security, homelessness, migration).

The goal of project HyPer is to better identify which groups of people are in these situations in Brussels today. In collaboration with people working in the field, researchers study the organisations and initiatives in Brussels that attempt to help these people; they also study whether—and how—people with low water security manage to access the water they need. The data collected will be confronted with other data from the past and from other cities.

End of the project : October 2022

ULB partners

Chloé Deligne, Pauline Bacquaert (Interdisciplinary laboratory on urban studies - LIEU, Maison des Sciences Humaines)
Jean-Michel Decroly,  Xavier May (IGEAT, Faculty of Sciences)
Pierre Lannoy, Valentina Marziali (METICES, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences)

Other partners

Brussels-Capital Health and Social Observatory

Dates
Created on March 26, 2019