Personalizing water

Every home produces its own harmless water.

Imagine the human settlement of Kakuma (Kenya), located in the desert, and notice that each shelter's roof has its own wind turbine, converting wind into water with no electricity needed — producing up to five liters of safe water (free of the dangerous microorganisms and toxic substances that cause diarrhea or dysentery) per hour.

More than 844 million people worldwide have to walk over half an hour to get water — usually two to four hours — and the water they obtain is almost always of poor quality.

Innovative tech solutions can massively help close the water access gap in less time. We need to individualize the ways to extract it from diverse sources, including air and sea.

Solutions that already exist

Ultrafiltration valves that pump river water to produce up to 500 liters of safe water per hour. For small farming communities.

Treatment plants that purify water using gravity alone, no electricity required. For small rural communities.

Atmospheric Water Generators (AWG) that turn air into up to 10,000 liters of water per day. For human settlements on the edges of large cities.

Portable UV purifiers that purify 1 liter of water in just 90 seconds, with capacity for up to 8,000 treatments.

How do we help them?

Addressing water scarcity, quality and management requires a shift in mindset, as expressed at the UN-Habitat Forum with more than 22,000 politicians and professionals from around the world in early February 2018. They consider it necessary to "adopt innovative and robust mechanisms for the diversification and expansion of means of implementation" and to "foster a culture of creativity and innovation embedded in the way cities and human settlements operate."

Individualizing access to safe water enables greater independence for each family economy. Individualizing access to safe water in human settlements helps raise the self-esteem of each human being.

Individualized manufacturing is part of the growing "Prosumer" phenomenon (the consumer who becomes producer). Individualizing is the essence of being human. Energy production at home is already individualized. Ice production is individualized: you no longer need to visit a glacier — a refrigerator suffices. The same applies to communication, transportation, urban gardens and food.

Self-esteem is built when one executes what one decides. That's why we must visualize better the trends and the empowerment potential of each person. And, in community, we make our solutions large.

Will it be complicated? Of course. Humans have always complicated things. The future is best conceived with solutions that require an inflection from the direction we're heading.