The protagonist of the week in Smart Water Magazine has undoubtedly been Dr John Cherry. Olivia Tempest spoke with him to learn what it means for him to receive the Stockholm Water Prize, and what can be done to make groundwater a priority. From the interview, I highlight this answer: "Depletion of the quantity of global groundwater and degradation of its quality has been occurring silently over decades with minimal societal awareness of the unfolding crisis. This results from a generally poor understanding of the specialized physics and chemistry and commonly ineffective governance structures established long ago without knowledge of groundwater science."
Aiming to stop groundwater from being largely neglected in water resource management, Dr Cherry has launched the Groundwater Project, an initiative that incorporates the voluntary expertise of scientists and engineers from 24 countries on 6 continents who are preparing hundreds of educational “book type” chapters for free online distribution wherever there is the internet. The objective: "explain ‘nearly all things groundwater’ at introductory, university and advanced levels of treatment relevant to both developed and developing countries.” From SWM, we express our support for the work of Dr Cherry and we hope that this project represents a before and after in the knowledge about groundwater in the world.
Meanwhile, digitization continues to star in many of the debates on water industry technology. This week we had three relevant articles in this area. Amir Cahn, Richard J. Vestner and Itai Boneh wrote about the “Data-as-a-Service” (DaaS) model, Digital Twins Cyber-physical Systems, and the impact of the digital revolution on the world's largest utilities, respectively. In Vestner's words: "Technology openness and new business models with new actors in a digital ecosystem will help accelerate added value creation."
Education and technological advancement: two pillars on which to build a better future for water management in the world.
