The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Land and Water Division has launched the second version of its Drought Finance Tracker, a tool designed to monitor country-level financial flows specifically allocated to drought management.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA, NZ) is using machine learning to forecast flood inundations in a fraction of the time required to run physical models − namely one to two minutes instead of 24 hours. Floods are New Zealand’s most frequent and costly natural disaster, meaning that fast and accurate forecasting of flood impacts is crucial for reducing the risk to life, property and infrastructure.
The 40th UN-Water Meeting was held at UN Headquarters in New York, from 4-5 November 2024. The event focused on the importance of water in accelerating progress as well as on the linkages between the water agenda and the three Rio Conventions on biodiversity, climate change and desertification.
Thirteen water companies have issued a joint statement, supporting the forthcoming European Water Resilience Strategy. The document emphasizes the critical role that digitalization must play in transforming the water value chain, ensuring the sustainable management of Europe’s most vital resource.
The IDEATION project, which kicked off in June 2024, will spend the next two years developing a roadmap for the European Commission. This roadmap includes a reference architecture, use cases and recommendations for the future design of a “Digital Twin Inland Waters” – a virtual representation of the European inland waters including rivers, lakes, groundwater and wetlands.
A group of Danish and Dutch researchers is on the way to revolutionizing what biomass from wastewater treatment plants can be used for. They show in a recently published scientific article how biopolymers from bacteria can be a sustainable alternative to oil-based products, and how phosphorus and other minerals can be harvested from wastewater.
Leaders of the Water Industry Printfrastructure project, a pioneering project to develop 3D printed infrastructure and components for the water sector, will be sharing insights from five years of research on a Webinar late in November. The project, which concludes in early 2025, has been led by United Utilities (UK) in partnership with ChangeMaker3D, Manchester Metropolitan University’s PrintCity and Scottish Water.
MIT engineers (USA) have built a new desalination system that runs with the rhythms of the sun. The system requires no extra batteries and doesn’t need expensive energy storage for times without sunshine, being therefore a good possible alternative to provide communities with drinking water at low costs.
The Stormwater Europe 2024 Exhibition & Conference will take place on December 11-12 in Amsterdam (NL). With a focus on ‚Green Infrastructure,‘ the event will give stormwater experts and environmental professionals the opportunity to explore new system solutions and discuss best management practices.
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO, CH) recently announced the launch of the proof-of-concept of the Global Ecosystems Atlas, a harmonized resource dedicated to mapping and monitoring all the world’s ecosystems. According to GEO, the tool is the first of its kind and was developed to support the protection, restoration and sustainable management of ecosystems critical to addressing global environmental crises.
A new report released by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) states that the water cycle is increasingly out of balance on a global scale, having critical consequences for the world economy and humanity. The global water crisis could endanger more than half of food production worldwide by 2050, the authors warn.
Research led by scientists from Oxford University (UK) has found that wild birds living close to humans are likely to carry bacteria with antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This creates an urgent need to consider the different ways antibiotic resistant bacteria can spread outside hospital settings, for example through contaminated rivers.
