Providing Access to Clean Water: One of the Grand Engineering Challenges of 21th Century

By Andrew Gorman and Dominika Szymkowiak.

Introduction

Engineering has become the key ingredient for our survival and for the world we live in today. For over thousands of years, humans have been faced with great difficulties and challenges, forcing them to adapt and come up with a solution.

Engineering has allowed the population of the earth to evolve and to become embed into a much more advanced and sophisticated lifestyle. There is still a great demand for our generation to progress and evolve this lifestyle much further, but there is also a greater demand for more vital essentials, and without them, could have drastic consequences. For example; to provide access to clean water, provide energy from fusion, and to make solar energy more economical [1].

Providing access to clean water

With the world evolving at a rapid pace, a simple underlying problem is still growing and effecting millions. The issue of providing access to clean water is currently causing havoc across the globe. About 1 out of every 6 people living today is currently unable to gain access to fresh drinking water, resulting in nearly 5,000 deaths from diseases due to poor water sources, ie; diarrhea. [2]

Poor water sanitation also leads to much more underlying problems ranging from, slowing down agricultural and industrial productivity, due to sheer shortage of water, or to poor toilet facilities effecting schools and reducing education as a whole.Today’s engineers are working to come up with a viable solution to tackle this problem head on. In a desperate attempt many engineers are focusing improving recycling of wastewater and sewage treatment. [2] Most of today’s solutions involve reducing the waste of water, in both agricultural, industrial and household.

Conclusion

It is un -questionable that as humans, we are faced with great challenges and difficulties, whether it may be from the everyday simple things or to the complex and sophisticated world of engineering and science. We are forced to overcome and adapt to these challenges in order to sustain the lifestyle that we have become so acquainted too.

The issue of providing access to clean water is a good example of this, it is vital to introduce a much better means of tackling this problem and prevent such severe consequences, especially in today’s time.

References

[1] “Introduction to the grand challenges for engineering” , Internet: the National Academy of Engineering, http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/challenges.aspx , 2012, (Accessed on: Dec. 12, 2012).

[2] “Provide access to clean water” , Internet: the National Academy of Engineering, http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9142.aspx , 2012, (Accessed on: Dec. 12, 2012).

[3] “Water, Sanitation and Hygiene” , Internet: United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, http://www.unicef.org/wash/ , 2012, (Accessed on: Dec. 12, 2012).