Strategic positioning: This center is geared towards China's primary strategic needs in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development. Aimed at the academic frontier of environmental science and centered on constructing sustainable urban water systems, this center will make theoretical and technological achievements with significant original innovations through first-class international technology cooperation and collaborative innovation. Meanwhile, this center is able to solve the current water environment problems during urban development, establish the international research highland of the future theoretical and technical development, and promote the academic level in the field of sustainable urban water systems comprehensively. As an international technology cooperation base, this center can contribute to the One Belt And One Road strategy and China's cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme, and provide technical support for the globalization of industries related to China's urban water systems.

Basic conditions: With famous environmental scientists and environmental engineers as the core, the center has gathered a group of young and middle-aged talents with high level, and formed faculty with complementary advantages, reasonable structure, strong team cohesiveness, high academic level, and important influence in domestic and overseas. Moreover, our college has the state key laboratory of pollution control and resource reuse, the Yangtze river water environment key laboratory of the Ministry of Education, the national engineering research center of urban pollution control, and other fully functional industry-university-research platforms. During the long-term development, the center has built a distinctive knowledge and technology innovation system of "Applied basic research-high technology research and development-major engineering applications". In recent years, this center has obtained a number of original research achievements with applied basic, and the discipline has ranked in the top 1% of most-cited global institutions in the ESI database. Several technologies with independent intellectual property rights have been developed in the fields of sewage treatment and reuse, safety and risk control of drinking water, ecological restoration of the polluted waterbody, sludge and solid waste utilization, rainwater collection and comprehensive utilization, etc. These technologies have also been successfully applied in Tai Lake, Chao Lake, and other major national projects of environmental pollution control, energy conservation, and emission reduction, which have achieved remarkable economic, environmental, and social benefits.

Development: Centred upon the construction of sustainable urban water systems and led by Professor Dai Xiaohu, Academician Xu Zuxin, etc, through the flexible introduction of four academicians of the American Academy of Engineering and more than ten international faculty members, four innovation teams of "Sewage treatment and reuse", "Safety and risk control of drinking water", "Ecological restoration of polluted waterbody", "Sludge and solid waste utilization" and "Rainwater collection and comprehensive utilization" were established. Meanwhile, the center has cultivated a group of scientists with international vision and outstanding innovation ability, and eleven new editors-in-chief/associate editors-in-chief of international authoritative journals in the field of environment, which has significantly enhanced the global impact of the base.

Through the international cooperation between China and other countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, Africa, and Norway, the center has undertaken twenty state-level international cooperation projects, won twenty science and technology rewards above the provincial level, and led the establishment of Union of Belt and Road for Deans of Environment School of together twenty-three countries and fifty-two universities. This center is able to promote the large-scale application of critical technologies in urban water systems and stimulate technological development and revolution in the field of water environment in One Belt and One Road countries.