During my 35-year career I have developed a strong belief that we - water professionals working in industry, research and government - need to closely cooperate if we are to successfully meet the unprecedented water challenges of our time. My mission is to encourage and promote that cooperation and help water managers to alleviate problems associated with current drought and flood risks in water resources systems, as well as provide insight into the water problems that current and future generations will have to deal with. I did an MSc in Water Management and a PhD in Mathematics and Civil Engineering, both at TU Delft. I have always been interested in ICT, operations research and data-driven modelling, and my work as an associate professor at UNESCO-IHE Delft gave me the opportunity to research, explore and apply these technologies to hydrologic and hydraulic problems. During my academic career, when I had the privilege to work in an exceptional team of hydroinformaticians, MSc students and PhD candidates, I saw how providing water education to international students is essential if we are to find sustainable solutions for water problems all over the world.Over the past 20 years, I have had the pleasure to work on creating modelling and information systems of value to practitioners in the water and agricultural sectors. The multi-disciplinary teams of HydroLogic and Weather Impact have created services to support water managers responsible for entire river-water basins, right down to the level of individual farmers. These services are based on monitoring data such as personal observations, telemetry networks, radar & satellite data and dynamic models. These technologies help us to predict water risks on a real-time basis, taking weather and climate conditions into consideration.These efforts have resulted in a range of software products branded as HydroNET, a Cloud-based ICT platform for automatic data collection, real-time modelling and operational advice. HydroNET now provides digital control rooms to over 8500 water professionals across the world. An essential element in our approach is acknowledging that we also need other specialists to help us close the information chain and meet all the differing stakeholder requirements. That’s why we team up with other ICT service providers in industry and research organizations, successfully applying cooperative business models.