Already 100 years ago, the subject water supply and drainage of cities was read by F. W. Büsing at the then still young "Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg". A decisive milestone was surely the appointment of Prof. Joseph Brix to the first chair of urban development and civil and underground engineering in Germany in 1904. After 1954 the chair of the department of urban water management is consecutively held by Prof. W. Schwenke, Prof. E. Gerlach, Prof. K. Roske, Prof. H. Gutsche and Prof. W. Hegemann. In January of 2006 Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Barjenbruch was appointed to the chair and is leading it since.
Urban water management covers the whole water cycle in populated areas. It is a classical field for building engineers and is therefore generally assigned to the department of civil engineering. At times, the urban water management department was allocated to the faculty of environmental engineering of the Technische Universität Berlin but since 2006 it once again belongs to the faculty of civil engineering.