North bound. #NWT #Spring
A World of Water for World Water Day - 3/22/2012
This year’s World Water Day theme of “Water and Food Security” has embedded water written all over it. According to the UN, “Each of us needs to drink 2 to 4 litres (0.5 to 1.1 gallons) of water every day. But it takes 2,000 to 5,000 litres (528 to 1321 gallons) of water to produce one person’s daily food.” It’s easy to see where a region facing water scarcity could also easily face food insecurity. In looking to the future, the UN has identified numerous challenges [PDF] between water and food, including:
- A rising and shifting demand for food;
- Increased risks from climate change;
- Yields limited by the gender gap;
- Scarce water resources;
- Increasing competition for water; and
- Degraded land and water resources.
These are big challenges, and as the population grows the demand for water will continue to grow. Not only will we need more water to use directly from a tap for things like drinking and bathing, but also to produce more food and consumer goods as well as more electricity from power plants, which also draw a lot of valuable water. Much of that future water use will come in the form of groundwater withdrawals increasing the need to evaluate and properly manage that very precious resource.
There are a lot of entities out there competing for our water. Planning and managing wisely with all these uses in mind is the only way to ensure that there will be enough for us all. According to the UN there are actions we can all take to cope with population growth and ensure access to nutritious food for everyone:
- Follow a healthier, sustainable diet;
- Consume less water-intensive products;
- Reduce scandalous food wastage: 30 to 50 percent of food produced worldwide is never eaten and the water (and energy) used to produce it is lost; and
- Produce more food, of better quality, with less water.
Reference: Ecocentric Blog
i2O: An Intelligent Grid For Water Systems That Could Save Millions Of Gallons
We’re all careful not to make our showers too long, and not to leave the faucet running, but municipal water waste occurs massively on an institutional level as well. i2O is a centralized water control method that directs the distribution and pressure of an entire water system. Sure, it sounds like Plumbing 2.0, but this is actually a good example of a disruptive technology.
Bringing our utilities up to date and improving local adjustments (like reverse charge from solar panels, grid-independent entities, and so on) is essential to keep our cities operating at peak efficiency. Sounds a bit robotic, I know, but the fact is that as cities worldwide grow denser and larger, existing municipal utility management systems simply aren’t going to cut it.
And really, as there is so much overlap between water control and, say, internet traffic routing and smart electricity grids, that it’s inexcusable for a modern city of a million people to have anything but a highly sophisticated, predictive, data-rich utility management system.
More information about the i20 system can be found on their website.
(via smarterplanet)
Startup Weekends aren’t just sweeping the nation, they’re sweeping the globe!
We live in a time where anything is possible and anything can be built - as long as we can bring together the right people around the right ideas.
Startup Weekend is a global initiative that brings together passionate individuals with unique skill sets and experiences, then challenges them to turn their ideas into reality over the course of a weekend.
This film captures the journey of two participants at Startup Weekend in Toronto: Ronan Levy (Delirious App) and Eugene Woo (Vizualize.me), and explores what it means to live the life of a startup entrepreneur.
More information:
toronto.startupweekend.org/
startupweekend.org
Renewable Oil Production Technology? Really neat project by Solazyme!
Now this is a really neat project. Solazyme’s renewable oil production technology allows us to do in a matter of days what it took nature millions of years to do.
The indirect photosynthesis bioproduction process uses microalgae to convert biomass directly into oil and other biomaterials, a process that can be performed in standard commercial fermentation facilities cleanly, quickly, and at low cost and large scale.
This renewable oil and bioproducts technology has manufactured thousands of gallons of oil and hundreds of tons of biomaterials that are tailored not only for biofuel production, but also as replacements for fossil petroleum and plant oils and compounds in a diverse range of products from oleochemicals to cosmetics and foods.
Read more about Solazyme’s work here: http://solazyme.com/
Reference: smarterplanet
