Highways in the sky no. 1
Oct 11, 2020/ by Felipe
Water: Isla Urbana
Having spent most of my life in Medellin and Houston, I am no foreigner to torrential downpours. Of late, I have wondered if there is a more productive use for the water and energy generated during storms, especially hurricanes. Isla Urbana, a Mexico City based non-profit is seeking to solve this underutilization by creating rainwater harvesting systems. The systems, aptly named "Tlaloc," in reference to the Aztec rain god, cost $750 and require an afternoon to install. Once in place, collected rainwater can provide residences with 40% to 100% of their water supply - a significant amount for a city of 22 million that is facing a severe water crisis with estimates indicating the city is one of ten major urban centers expected to run out of water by 2030. Since inception in 2009, Isla Urbana has installed more than 20,000 systems, serving over 120,000 people, and harvesting approximately 1 billion liters of rainwater each year. WSJ (5 minutes)
Water: Source Global
Bahia Hondita is located in the farthest tip of La Guajira peninsula in Colombia and is one of the most remote communities in the region - there is no transportation infrastructure, and like the majority of La Guajira, access to potable water is scarce and service continuity is low. The region; however, is rich in solar radiation, receiving close to 6.0 kWh/m2 of solar irradiance, an amount comparable to areas in Southern California and Northern Sahara. Source Global, a water technology startup out of Arizona, in partnership with Conservation International, are using proprietary hydropanels, the region's most abundant resource, and ambient air to produce drinking water. The hydropanels use solar energy to power fans, which feed air into a system with water absorbing material that captures water vapor from passing air. Water vapor is then extracted, condensed, and infused with minerals. In Bahia Hondita, 149 panels have been installed, producing 22,000 liters of drinking water each month. Along with all systems installed in over 40 countries, produced water quality in Bahia Hondita is monitored via cloud interface. By 2030, the world will only have 60% of the water demanded by growing global populations, Source Global aims to use its platform to provide a sustainable solution. CleanTechnica (2 minutes)
Water: Colorado River
The Colorado River supports drinking water for 40 million people, jobs for 16 million, power capacity of 4.2 GW, farmland irrigation for 5.5 million acres, and an economic product of $1.4 trillion. Studies suggest, a 10% decline in water would result in a loss of $143 billion of economic activity, and a loss of 1.6 million jobs in one year. The management of this important resource is set by the 1922 Compact, or "The Law of the River", which apportions 7.5 million acre feet of water annually for the Upper Colorado Basin (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming) and 7.5 million acre feet of water annually for the Lower Colorado Basin (Arizona, California, Nevada). As you can imagine, demand has changed dramatically since 1922, and since 1950, the states using this resource have experienced some of the highest levels of population growth in the U.S. Now entering its 21st consecutive year of drought, the Colorado River Basin is need of leading management systems to protect the wellbeing of all of its stakeholders. As such, a team of engineers from Cornell University have developed a model to simulate more than one million potential outcomes to determine how the individual stakeholders of the river system would be uniquely affected. Using this information, the team aims to understand how forthcoming changes in population or climate patterns, may be translated to public policy and river management in order to mitigate potential water shortages. Cornell (2 minutes)