Abstract
One ancient wisdom says, ‘He who does not know the past cannot create the future’. This is not only true for the peoples and countries, but also for every human activity and society. In the course of time, human society has often passed through booms and declines. However, the necessity for life was always the need for freshwater. Nowadays, when extremely dry months alternate with local torrential rainfall, water management is frequent, and construction of laboratories of water management was shown as a very wise act. The Faculty of Civil Engineering in Brno, Czech Republic, has its history reaching far back into the nineteenth century. Indisputably, the elaboration of the concept and the factual establishment of water laboratories is worldwide ground-breaking. Founder of the water laboratories in Brno is Prof. Ing. Antonín Smrček, Dr. h. c. To defend the first laboratories in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he used both his literary talent and knowledge of Czech and German languages in speeches at international congresses on dams and navigation. Prof. Smrček was striving to contribute as effectively as possible to the development of his school and the Czech element in Moravia. Therefore, he became elected a deputy of the Moravian Land Diet (Parliament Assembly) and later also of the Vienna Reich Council where he collaborated, amongst others, with T. G. Masaryk. He stood up efficiently for the further extension of the Brno Technical College with mechanical, chemical, electrical, and cultural branches and carried through the chemical building on Žižkova Street. When appraising the life and work of Prof. Smrček is becoming more and more aware of the legacy of our ancestors. With humility and pride, we invite you to take a short trip through the past and present of the water research laboratories in Brno. Let us be grateful.
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Acknowledgements
The article paper was drawn up within project No. LO1408 “AdMaS UP—Advanced Building Materials, Structures and Technologies” supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports as part of the targeted support programme “National Programme for Sustainability I”. And within the sustainability of international project E!7614 of the EUREKA programmes.
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Pařílková, J., Zachoval, Z. (2020). Past, Present and Future of the Laboratory of Water Management Research in Brno. In: Zelenakova, M., Fialová, J., Negm, A. (eds) Assessment and Protection of Water Resources in the Czech Republic. Springer Water. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18363-9_2
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