The Future of Water

Nestled on the southeast coast of the Persian Gulf in the heart of the Arabian Desert, Dubai is one of the world's fastest-growing cities. Its rapid development—from an estimated 10,000 people in 1900, according to some reports, to nearly 2.5 million today—has placed extreme stress on the infrastructure that makes up the city's impressive skyline. As the area's leaders and developers strategize how to catch up with the staggering growth, sustainability remains a key goal to ensure the urban area can support the 3.4 million residents that are estimated to inhabit the city by 2020, according to a United Arab Emirates news source.

For these developers, the goal is to make Dubai the most sustainable city in the world. As part of this goal, developers are building what is known as Dubai Sustainable City, an area that will be characterized by sustainable townhomes, training centers for sustainable practices, a "green school," eco-resort, biodome greenhouses and organic farms, all powered by 600,000 square feet of solar cells. Also key to the sustainability of the new development is a smart water system that is planned to minimize water demand by 30 percent while recycling wastewater to fertilize and irrigate the farms, according to an article on inhabitat.com. These efforts represent one example of how municipalities, industry and organizations are striving to develop innovative technologies to promote sustainability and combat a worsening global water crisis. As the world's population continues to rise—to up to 9.7 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations—water scarcity will remain a real and imminent danger. MIT researchers predict that "by 2050, more than half the world's population will live in water-stressed areas and about a billion or more will not have sufficient water resources." Finding ways to recycle and reuse the earth's most precious resource has become a priority for water technology experts. As cities like Dubai strive to conserve water, metropolitan areas like Flint, Michigan, are facing a water crisis of their own. Because of aging water infrastructure and inadequate treatment, nearly 100,000 Flint residents have lost access to safe drinking water, according to published media reports. When Flint stopped purchasing water from the city of Detroit, which properly treats water with orthophosphate to prevent heavy metal contamination, and began sourcing water from the Flint River in 2014, lead and other chemicals began to leach into the residential water supply. Inadequate treatment combined with aging lead service lines caused lead levels in some homes to reach nearly 400 parts per billion, about 27 times safe levels, according to media reports. The situation in Flint has shown that, even in parts of the world where water seems plentiful, securing a future of safe and reliable water access will require diligence, innovation and a commitment to sustainability. Visit our website throughout the month for more features that will highlight a handful of distinctive technological innovations and advancements designed to help propel the world's population toward a more sustainable future.