GRAND CHALLENGES OF ENGINEERING IN THE 21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS PART ONE:
WATER
By Gary Kuleck, Alexa Rihana-Abdallah, and Utpal Dutta
Editor’s note 1: The National Academy of Engineering, at the request of the National Science Foundation, convened a committee of leading technical thinkers to create a list of the grand challenges and opportunities for engineering facing those born at the dawn of this new century. After much input, experts, and discussion, many ideas were shared and a final conclusion was presented. As we contemplated appropriate articles for this issue, which focuses on The Evolution of Engineering, it became clear that addressing some of the challenges on these pages, from our experts’ perspective was a good fit. This is the first in a series of articles addressing The Grand Challenges of Engineering in the 21st Century. Editor’s note 2: Footnotes and citations have been omitted from this version of the article. For a version with references, please contact Susan Thwing at sthwing@esd.org.
Figure 1. Where does our water come from?
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nderstanding the scope and complexity of the challenges are a first step in developing solutions. Solutions must incorporate technological development and implementation, public policy and government engagement, and the impact of new technology on human and natural ecosystems. Furthermore, the unexpected consequences from applying new technologies, processes, and policies must be considered beforehand. Thus, engineers should be engaged at every level including utilizing a systems engineering approach to mitigate and ameliorate inevitable emergent behavior because of the complexity and interdependency of all elements of proposed solutions. Solutions will not, therefore, be ‘quick’ fixes but will require dedicated, persistent multidisciplinary efforts over a longer time scale. It is in this light that we examine the Grand Challenge: “Provide Access to Clean Water”. Water and its Availability Water is ubiquitous and its availability is absolutely vital for life to exist on earth. Humans need water for daily sustenance and without plentiful and reliable water availability, society would cease to function. Most of earth’s water (>96%) is in salty oceans (Fig. 1). Of the fresh water (~3%), most (~99%) is tied up in a frozen state or trapped in underground aquifers. Thus, only about 0.03 percent of total water is readily available for use. Furthermore, available fresh water is unevenly distributed with over 50 percent in just nine countries: the United States, Canada, Columbia, Brazil, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia, India, China and Indonesia. The difficulty of accessing fresh water, increasing its availability and accessibility, or attempting to convert salty ocean water to fresh water (desalination), are major technological barriers in solving this grand challenge. Water Consumption The world consumes more than 9,000 billion cubic meters of waters of water annually with China, India and the U.S. using approximately 38 percent of the total consumption (Fig. 2). The per capacity usage clearly shows that developed nations use far more water per capita due to higher standards of living and more indiscriminate use. These results also reflect the stronger tendency of developed nations toward greater industrial development while developing nations tend toward greater agricultural use of water (Table 1). Thus, the availability highlights some of the challenges facing the global provision of water: developed countries may have