Will we stop packing a water bottle and collect air on-the-go? Will personal straws be the next big thing to ensure we get access to drinking water? Will ancient desalination techniques be our saving grace and enable us to engineer the future of water? Or will the ocean start cleaning itself?

1. Harvesting water from the air is a method that has been practiced for more
than 2,000 years and has been revived in various ways today. Industrial
designer Kristof Retezár has invented Fontus, a self-filling water bottle that
collects the moisture contained in the air, condenses it and stores it as safe
drinking water. The WarkaWater Towers in Ethiopia are structures made out
of juncus stalks or bamboo, nylon and polypropylene mesh use the same
method. As droplets form, they flow along the mesh pattern into the basin
at the base of the towers by harvesting atmospheric water vapor.
Sources: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3037505/no-need-to-bring-water-on-
your-bike-ride-this-bike-sucks-it-up-from-the-air
http://inhabitat.com/nature-inspired-warkawater-towers-use-
condensation-to-collect-drinking-water-in-ethiopia/
Will we stop packing
a water bottle and collect air on-the-go?
WATERisLIFE and LifeStraw® have come up with innovative solutions with
regard to portable water purifiers. WATERisLIFE is a filter straw that can be
used for any water source to provide clean and safe drinking water. The
straw can clean more than 800 liters of water in total. LifeStraw® has a
range of products that provide a compact high volume purifier for
situations like camping, group hikes and expeditions.
Sources: http://waterislife.com/clean-water/the-straw
http://www.buylifestraw.com/en/
Will personal straws be the next big thing to
ensure we get access to drinking water?
Desalination has played a vital role in the world's supply of usable water.
Desalination techniques such as distillation, reverse osmosis and electrodialysis
are some of the most widely used methods. Many arid places in the world, such as
Chile, Israel and Saudi Arabia, have turned to ocean water desalination to provide
an assured supply of water. Infrastructure engineer Fahad Al-Attiya talks about the
unexpected ways by which the small Middle Eastern nation of Qatar creates its
water supply. In Israel, Sorek, a saltwater reverse osmosis plant, sets significant
new industry benchmarks in desalination technology, capacity and water cost.
Sorek is said to the world’s largest and cheapest saltwater reverse osmosis plant.
Sources: http://www.ted.com/talks/fahad_al_attiya_a_country_with_no_water
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megascale-desalination/
Will ancient desalination techniques be our saving grace
and enable us to engineer the future of water?
Drone prototypes that can scoop up water samples are being developed
to help ecologists. Prototypes such as PrecisionHawk’s drones are said to
be a new wave of hands-on aerial robots that may be able to perform
rudimentary analysis on the water they collect.
Sources: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534271/drones-that-can-
suck-up-water-hunt-oil-leaks-invasive-species/
Will flying drones tap the oceans clean?
A 20-year-old inventor's idea is aiming to clean our oceans in an efficient
way. Slat’s Ocean Cleanup Foundation is developing a way to use ocean
currents to its advantage and envisions long-distance arrays of floats that
would skim garbage from the surface while allowing aquatic life and the
currents themselves to pass by underneath.
Sources: http://www.boredpanda.com/20-year-old-inventor-ocean-cleanup-boyan-slat/
Or will the ocean start cleaning itself?
FEED
WATER
PURE
WATER
thefutureof
USABLE
WATER“Water is life's mater and matrix,
mother and medium. There is no life
without water “
- Albert Szent-Györgyi
The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2015 report declares global water crises as
the number one threat facing the planet, and 750 million people around the world lack
access to safe water.
Even though the present scenario looks alarming and the future looks even more grim;
innovation and technology might just help us sail through to a brighter future of water.
Interestedinfuturereportsandprojectionsforyourbusiness?
Checkoutice.humanfactors.com or
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