IT based Innovations in Sustainability of Water Resources
Sustainable access to water is impending crisis levels across India. Water will become the bottleneck for the economic growth of the country affecting all sectors including food and agriculture, industry, energy, and human health. This is a multifaceted challenge and it involves rapidly declining water quantity and quality in surface and groundwater resources, extremely variable distribution in space and time affecting availability and access, and devastating consequences of floods and droughts driven by the uncertainty of the strength and timing of the monsoon system. The demand for water driven by agriculture, industrial, consumptive and livestock needs is increasing rapidly. This is further compounded by the affects of climate change that is increasing glacier melt rates, changing frequencies of floods and droughts, and impacting the natural and human demand for water. The solution of water issues requires consideration of water, energy, food and human health as an integrated problem. Human rights and social justice are also an integral part of the solution needs. Significant progress can be made by enabling locally informed, locally relevant and market efficient solutions through empowerment of the community that is blended/overlaid with centrally planned and policy driven solutions.
The academy is envisioned as an organization that serves as a catalyst for developing human resources, scientific and technological capacity, and economic and policy solutions to foster multifaceted and comprehensive solution to the most important societal challenge of our time. This will be accomplished through partnerships and empowerment of existing academic, social and research institutions; development of new paradigms of partnerships between public and private sectors; support for the emergence of new institutions and modalities of synergistic interactions; and facilitation for adoption of new, novel and unorthodox solutions.