A new transatlantic collaboration, Clean Water for All, will bring leading water engineers from the United States and the UK together to tackle problems of providing clean, sustainable water supplies.
The 2013 Global Grand Challenges Summit initiative between the national academies of engineering in the UK and US brings together leading international engineers, innovators, and policy makers to share ideas on solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
Clean water is critical global issue and lack of it has major societal, health, and economic implications. It has been identified by the international research community, including the US National Academy of Engineering, as a grand challenge for engineering in the area of sustainability.
This event is based on the understanding that solutions to these challenges rely on interdisciplinary and international cooperation. The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a joint, parallel activity to encourage collaborative research between leading researchers and students from the UK and US.
Current engineering portfolios in both the UK and US will benefit by the supplementation of existing grants.
The University of Exeter will collaborate with The University of Utah and The University of Arizona to make urban water systems more sustainable and resilient.
The University of Glasgow is exploring new technologies such as synthetic biology, nanomaterial science, and bio-electrochemical systems and applying them to water engineering.
The University of Sheffield will hold a symposium to investigate water re-use in urban areas.
The University of Oxford, University of Massachusetts, and Sandia National Laboratory will evaluate how best to use algorithms to improve methodologies to assess risks to water security.
Research groups from the Universities of Nottingham, Cambridge, and Leeds, along with Cranfield University, University of the West of England, London School of Economics, Newcastle University, and Heriot-Watt University are working on a research project to deliver and evaluate multiple flood risk benefits in blue-green cities.
