World Water Week is an annual event in Stockholm that serves as a focal point for discussions around global water issues. This year is the jubilee year for both Water Week and the Stockholm Water Prize, and the theme was Water for Development. Organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), World Water Week brings together around 2,500 experts, practitioners, decision makers and business innovators from around the globe to exchange ideas, foster new thinking and develop solutions.
2015 is the last year of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, and the UN will decide upon new international goals at a General Assembly at the end of September. There are 17 suggested goals, and one of them is to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. This goal, along with its related targets, sets forth a broad and ambitious post-2015 water and sanitation agenda.
Ericsson participated in a full-day workshop on “Information technologies for a smarter water future”. In this workshop there was a focus on the potential of harnessing information technologies for more sustainable water and sanitation solutions, for example, by reducing water use in food production and other commodities. On the ground, the rise of smartphones and increased internet access will lead to an explosion of data sharing both inside and outside existing governance structures, which will empower many, from farmers to local utility workers and from local government staff to citizens and civil society groups. Innovative information technologies will also lead to advanced system-wide solutions and smart water extraction, treatment and delivery infrastructure.
Ericsson representatives also took part on a panel about ICT and the availability to water, and the company also arranged a field visit to Ericsson Studio in Kista in northern Stockholm. Almost 60 visitors from the conference joined and listened to three different ways Ericsson has engaged in the ICT and water area. The first was a presentation by Grundfos and Ericsson on a commercial project we have jointly on m-Commerce and water pumps in Africa.
The second was about a research project on “citizen field engineers” in Nairobi, carried out by Nairobi Water, UN-Habitat and Ericsson, where we develop ICT tools to secure access to safe and reliable water as well as developing a citizen engagement model for the field engineers. The last presentation was by Coca-Cola and Ericsson about the new EKOCENTER project and how ICT is used to provide both internet access and access to clean water to citizens in at-risk communities.
The visitors also looked at the Grundfos water pump in the studio, and the feedback was very positive on the possibilities of ICT to enable safe and secure water to all.
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