Last January, the UN declared a state of “water bankruptcy” in its Global Water Bankruptcy report, pointing to the irreversible depletion of aquifer reserves due to increasing human demand.
The UN’s global review paints a bleak picture: 75% of the world’s population lives in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure; more than half of the planet’s major lakes are drying up; two billion people live on land that is subsiding due to groundwater over-pumping. Over the past 50 years, wetlands equivalent to the entire surface area of the European Union have been lost.
The 2026 UN Water Conference, to be held later this year, advises: protect every drop.
Addressing this challenge requires the use of digital technology to improve efficiency, reduce losses, and close funding gaps in utilities facing increasing operational and financial pressure. According to Jaime Barba, Head of Xylem Vue, “digital solutions are no longer optional. They are now essential operational requirements.” In addition, he also highlighted: “The future of water will be digital, or there will be no future."
The road to digitalization: five trends
The report Water Technology Trends 2026: a strategic guide to the future of smart water released by Xylem Vue analyzes this transformation framework, identifying five key trends that are paving the way toward the digitalization of this precious resource across the globe.
Artificial intelligence is poised to be a catalyst for this change, transforming fragmented information into decisions based on structured data.
On the one hand, this is achieved through generative AI, which is now considered an operational capability in its own right, as it goes beyond synthesizing knowledge and recommending actions to help break down information silos and unlock the value of unstructured data. This will enable utilities to become more resilient, efficient, and better equipped to measure, anticipate, and act in real time.
On the other hand, agent-based architectures are now emerging. These new approaches will enable natural language queries to be converted into analytical flows that can be audited and automated, with a special focus on security and control in critical infrastructures.
Security, and more specifically cybersecurity, remains a cornerstone of this profound transformation, according to Xylem Vue. Growing interconnectivity and the proliferation of cyberattacks make it a strategic necessity, not only to comply with existing regulations but also to ensure service continuity and protect public health.
Extreme events will continue to be commonplace. In this scenario, early warning systems still play a leading role, enabling highly accurate predictions of how river basins are likely to respond to severe meteorological events.
Their evolution toward platforms that integrate high-resolution hydraulic models, advanced weather forecasting, and stochastic and statistical analysis, combining multiple real-time information sources, underscores the importance of ensuring greater public safety when these events occur.
Finally, partnerships between public authorities and private enterprises continue to be a driving force behind the transformation required across the sector. Numerous initiatives, such as the PERTE program in Spain, the Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow (SWIFT) in the United States, and the West Bengal Drinking Water Sector Improvement Project in India, show how cooperation, including collaboration between companies, can multiply operational efficiency and reduces risk, especially when data governance and interoperability are built in from the start.
