Researches

A sustainable management of global freshwater resources requires reliable estimates of the water demanded by irrigated agriculture. This has been attempted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through country surveys and censuses, or through Global Models, which compute irrigation water withdrawals with sub-models on crop types and calendars, evapotranspiration, irrigation efficiencies, weather data and irrigated areas, among others. Here we demonstrate that these strategies err on the side of excess complexity, as the values reported by FAO and outputted by Global Models are largely conditioned by irrigated areas and their uncertainty. Modelling irrigation water withdrawals as a function of irrigated areas yields almost the same results in a much parsimonious way, while permitting the exploration of all model uncertainties. Our work offers a robust and more transparent approach to estimate one of the most important indicators guiding our policies on water security worldwide.

This big data revolution, which encompasses techniques to capture, process, analyse and visualize large datasets in a rapid timeframe, has led to an explosion in data variety over the last five decades. Significant advances in data growth in the bio-geophysical sciences have allowed scientists to discover, analyse and understand environmental changes at micro to global scales, and separate out what is human-driven. As a consequence, the state and trends of the environment is increasingly becoming a focus of big data applications. Here, we discuss the trends emerging from these environmental analyses (including the derived data products) and propose a way forward to harness these technologies to mitigate global environmental declines.

The future is going to be largely what we design it to be. Will the future be one of continued challenges from shortages of water, depletion of finite material and energy resources, and degradation of the environment, or one of effective and efficient systems that bring about concurrent environmental and economic prosperity for societal benefit? The role of engineers and designers on all scales—molecular, products, processes, and systems—is going to be central and essential in determining what tomorrow will look like. Green engineering—engineering for sustainability—uses the same traditions of brilliance, innovation, and creativity, which are the legacy of the engineering disciplines, within the context and perspective of environmental, economic, and social benefit. This new application of engineering excellence to sustain-ability is among the most complex and important challenges faced by science and technology.