Water is the most critical element for human civilization. Without water we perish, and without abundant stores of water we cannot hope to have ongoing human settlement in an area. Water is the single most important element that affects both where and how we live on our planet.
Water holds a rather unique place in our psyche due to our need for water and the inherent dangers that water poses to our health and the stability of our communities. Water is needed for life, yet if anything goes wrong with the purity of our water supply tremendous public health costs result. Water is also something that we constantly need to balance, as the threat of too much water is detrimental to our structures.
The complex management, treatment and distribution of water requires an extensive infrastructure. A great deal of pipes and conduits are required for water to reach our dwellings both quickly and safely. The process of making drinkable water for our populations requires significant engineering, as does the treatment of human waste. The natural flow of water on our planet requires management, from the mitigation of flood threat to the movement of water for irrigation.
Links Between Development and Water Resources
Harnessing water for drinking, crops and sanitation is one of the earliest toeholds that allowed for humankind’s ongoing settlement in one area. Since our earliest rudimentary attempts to harness water, humans have gained a great deal of expertise in the movement and processing of water. This expertise has placed human settlement on land that could not naturally sustain populations. Diversion and stockpiling of water makes this development possible, yet the finite nature of this resource is inescapable.
All over the world our communities are faced with pressures in dealing with this finite resource. Drought has stricken a great number of communities, exposing our somewhat tenuous hold on the landscape. There’s also growing competition for water among communities, followed by complex laws and litigation that keep lawyers busy.
Rapid development in arid and semi-arid locations can’t go unchecked without confronting significant challenges to providing enough water to support ever-growing communities. There is a limit to the problems that our engineers can resolve, but there’s also much more that we can do to make our water systems more efficient and sustainable.
Sustainable Water Management
In order to reach sustainability goals, we must innovate on how we manage storm water, water supply, and wastewater
Much of our drinkable water supply is wasted either in how it is used or how it is distributed. Achieving water distribution efficiency is the first step toward sustainable water management. In cities across the world, there are considerable leaks in the water distribution system with water wastage rates as high as twenty percent. The first line of action toward sustainability is to fix our distribution systems so that wastage is reduced to at least single digits.
How we use water in our homes and businesses can also be greatly improved upon. Over-watering lawns and landscapes is a large problem, but so is the waste of water in the home whether it’s leaking faucets or too much laundry. Each of us are likely to be called upon to reduce consumption during times of drought, but there is also a regular need to reduce consumption to recharge aquifers and improve long-term viability of this resource.
Cities have come across several means to ease the burden of new development. For instance many cities are reusing so-call grey water for irrigation. This water comes from untreated sources and eases the burden of water treatment. There’s also the close management of seasonal demands, and the mandate for low-impact development that uses low-water plants (xeriscaping) in arid areas. Las Vegas sets turf limits for its residents and has a large ongoing campaign that rebates customers for water smart landscaping.
Water pollution is another ongoing concern that can harm the entire food chain. Over the past twenty years there has been a significant reduction in the pollutions coming from factories and wastewater facilities. There continue to be issues with contamination from stormwater runoff, and increasing regulations are starting to address that problem.
Big dams and water storage are still needed in some parts of the world, but the existence of these barriers in what were once connected ecosystems, wreaks havoc on the balance in our natural world. There are increasingly new approaches for greater stream buffering and channel alterations that greatly helps in reducing the threat of flood. Hydroelectric power generation has also been altered to require much less disruption in the natural flow of waterways.
Overall, inroads are being made to safely and efficiently deliver drinking water in the developed world, but today more than 1/3 of the world’s population don’t have access to fresh water. From a global sustainability perspective, there’s much to be done to spread technology and ensure that there’s a good balance between nature and humankind’s need for this resource.
GIS and engineering-grade design tools have long played a role in all aspects of water management. The physics of water require detail on the third dimension, with water following gravity’s pull. This requirement for knowledge and visualization of 3D space continues to spur innovations on how we collect 3D data, visualize it and analyze it. The modeling of water is a key component of sustainability coverage, and an area where geospatial technologies will continue to contribute greater insight.
Read what Jeff Thurston has to say on this subject here.
References
Mapping Water Losses – A Success Story, by Jack S. Cook
Water and Sustainability – Pacific Institute
Sustainability and Water – World Population Awareness
Water Use Calculator (Australia)
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