America's water is at a crossroads. For years, the world looked to the United States as a leader in scientific and economic water management, and sought to emulate the nation's approach to water development. Today, however, the United States has no policy or strategic planning process for the management of this crucial resource at the national level. The America's Water initiative aims to address the great water infrastructure challenge by re-examining the issues of public-private investment in water systems and outlining the potential for radical technical design and infrastructure management innovations, with the ultimate goal of restoring America's global leadership in infrastructure design and water management in the farms, cities and watercourses of the future.
Modeling
The “America’s Water – The Changing Landscape of Risk, Competing Demands and Climate,”systematically assesses the past and current state of America’s national water use, including how variations in climate, energy development and national/global economics over the last century influenced changes in water use and its valuation across the continental US. The project envisions the future of water in the nation with an interactive modeling environment, The America’s Water Analysis, Synthesis, and Heuristics (AWASH) model, that explicitly considers the capacity expansion of water and energy infrastructure, potential reallocation of cropping patterns, energy and economic scenarios, prescribed water rights/allocation mechanisms and ecological needs.
Innovation
Technological advances will shape the future of America's infrastructure. The CWC team actively researches the role and feasibility of decentralized water supply solutions and real-time water quality monitoring technologies as well as water reuse applications and wastewater management practices across the country.
Risk Management
Water utilities are vulnerable not only to societal changes such as increasing population, urbanization, and technology, but also to climate variability. The CWC in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Amherst developed Water Risk Indices for potential application to water supply management in utilities in the urban Northeastern United States.
Researchers at the CWC developed a water stress index to inform the potential severity of droughts, considering the accumulated deficit between the demand and the renewable water supply at a particular location, mapping it at the county level across the U.S.
