Realizing that present and future water-related problems require out-of-the-box thinking and unusual business approaches, IHE Delft supports innovation in all core activities of education, research, and capacity development.

IHE Delft's innovations are not just of a technological nature, they include new educational programs and research findings, in all cases. Their adoption and use also has social, economic, environmental, governance, institutional, and political dimensions.

Research-based innovations originate from these six research themes of IHE Delft that are well-aligned with relevant international and national science programs, including the UNESCO science program:

• Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation
  
• Water-related Hazards and Climate Change
  
• Water and Ecosystems Quality
  
• Water Management and Governance
  
• Water, Food, and Energy Security
  
• Information and Knowledge Systems
  

Examples of recent innovations include: IHE-Delft and UNICEF as lead of the Global WASH Cluster, created a Graduate Professional Diploma Programme (GPDP) with the aim to extend the provision of humanitarian WASH education. The GPDP in humanitarian WASH consists of 4 accredited modules and will educate professionals working in the fields of water, sanitation and hygiene on the complexity of humanitarian settings.

The IHE Delft-led Water Peace and Security consortium seeks to prevent and reduce water-related conflicts by supporting joint, informed, timely, and effective action. To achieve this objective, the consortium has developed a suite of innovative tools and approaches at global and local scales. The global approach includes the development of the web-based Global Early Warning Tool that forecasts areas of potential conflict hotspots based on machine learning.

The Global Sanitation Graduate School is a platform to facilitate the development and to empower the dissemination of knowledge on sanitation through postgraduate (MSc) programs, online courses, face-to-face courses, and tailor-made training so that the sanitation challenges can be embraced with deeper insight, advanced knowledge, and greater confidence.