Aarhus is flooding from all sides:

Rain from above, groundwater from below, rising seawater from outside, and flooded streams and rivers from within.

“This means we have to integrate water management on a completely new, strategic level today. And it sets demands for the engineers of the future.”

That’s according to Emilie Møller.

She teaches diploma engineers specializing in Urban Water at the Department of Civil Engineering and Building Design, while also working as a hydraulic project manager at Aarhus Vand.

All in one full-time position.

About 75 percent of the time, she coordinates drainage systems for the municipality, while the remaining time is spent grading assignments, supervising, and teaching at Navitas.

“It’s an exciting combination, both professionally and personally. I’m not just running operations day in and day out. I develop the engineers of the future while staying deeply connected to the industry,” says Emilie Møller.

Students reimagine real-world crises

After six years as a consulting engineer at NIRAS, Emilie Møller was hired in 2021 as one of the first to take on this kind of dual role.

Previously, she had briefly experienced teaching as an external supervisor for several final-year projects at the department.

“It’s not a rejection of private consulting; it’s a choice to be in two exciting places at the same time,” she explains.

Both roles benefit from her combined position.

She brings real-world flood experiences into the classroom—and simultaneously returns with new ideas for Aarhus Vand.

In October 2023, Aarhus was hit by flooding following enormous amounts of rainfall.

Emilie Møller uses the handling of these floods as a teaching case, asking students to analyze what went wrong.

“It provides new perspectives for me and Aarhus Vand to review and manage the incident through the students,” she says.

“Conversely, I gain new knowledge through my work at Aarhus Vand, which the students benefit from. I believe you can offer more relevant teaching if you still have one foot in the industry.”

Water is a global question of money and resources

One of the aspects that attracted Emilie was the opportunity to influence education and shape the engineers of the future.

“It’s a relatively new field that is still developing compared to more classical engineering disciplines,” she says.

“We create the documentation as we work and don’t have the same established standards or regulations as other engineering disciplines. That makes it flexible for me.”

She emphasizes that water is both an urgent and highly topical issue worldwide:

“Water attracts significant attention because it involves climate adaptation, coastal protection—and money and resources,” she says.

“Who should pay for the damage caused by increasing rainfall and severe flooding?”

Denmark has had to rethink water entirely differently than before.

Water domains and drainage systems must be seen as a single cycle—everything affects everything else, and you can’t separate the elements.

“This understanding emerges now because we’ve seen the first extreme events—and we know there will only be more of them,” says Emilie Møller.

Emilie owns projects from start to finish

A concrete example is Vesterbro Torv. It sits low and is surrounded by steep slopes that channel rainfall down to the square.

The municipality has recently redesigned the square, and in this process, water must be integrated in a completely new way.

“We must constantly consider climate change and ensure the systems can handle the volumes of water that come,” she says.

Normally, systems are designed to handle five-year events, but Vesterbro Torv is designed for twenty-year events.

“There will always be 100-year events, where flooding is unavoidable,” she says.

“But if the pipes are to last 80 years, they must also withstand rainfall in 80 years. At the same time, we are careful not to overdimension—because that’s expensive and not very sustainable,” explains Emilie Johanne Møller.

She is involved in all project phases—from concept to planning, execution, and operation:

“I can ‘own’ entire projects from start to finish at Aarhus Vand instead of being called in for tasks like sewer separation in Kalundborg or detailed design in Holstebro,” she says.

“That’s something I love both personally and professionally, but it also adds value in the classroom, because I’m not just teaching based on fragments of ‘reality’.”