At the ASU Water Institute, our work is interdisciplinary.
We are committed to fostering opportunities and creating spaces where experts from the social sciences, humanities, law and policy, engineering and natural sciences can come together.
By facilitating collaboration, these experts can discuss, frame and, most importantly, co-develop ideas and solutions for pressing water problems.
Strategic Initiatives
We experience water in many ways: aesthetically, culturally, spiritually, as a resource for our consumption, as a hazard from floods and storms and as a waste product generated by our use.
Technology and infrastructure support these services and mitigate unwanted impacts, and regulations and policy measures ensure that water is safe for designated use. These fundamental social structures uphold the design of modern places, which require adequate funding for construction, operation, maintenance, risk mitigation and compliance. Effective water governance is the critical layer that connects our social structures and manages competing demands.
Population growth, the pressures of urbanization and a higher per-capita use of resources translate into dwindling water supplies, increased exposure to floods and droughts, and waste streams that make it difficult to ensure safety. Resource scarcity and infrastructure challenges are complicated by inadequate funding, bureaucratic delays, economic disparities and political factors. This leaves us with a guiding question – how can communities plan, design and implement solutions to these complex challenges in the 21st century?
is crucial for public health, economic stability and a healthy environment. It prevents disease and illnesses, reduces exposure to contaminants such as lead and PFAS, upholds principles of social equity and supports manufacturing and agriculture sectors, healthy ecosystems and biodiversity.
is fundamental for human health, economic growth and urbanization. It underpins essential societal needs like food and energy, and supports the infrastructure that makes meeting these needs possible, including agriculture and industrial processes. Water security also supports ecosystems and provides clean drinking water to prevent disease.
is imperative, as these events can cause major harm. Hazards can lead to loss of human life and financial loss in the billions of dollars and damage to essential systems like infrastructure, food production, fish and wildlife habitats and public health institutions. They can also disrupt water resources provision.
ASU’s expertise in water
Our researchers have experience in a vast array of water-related topics, covering biological and physical sciences, social sciences, engineering, and humanities. Here is a breakdown of some key categories that describe the breadth of our work.
Adapted from the 2022 ASU Expertise in Water analysis, prepared by Catherine Chen, ASU Knowledge Enterprise
Water is life
Water is essential to human existence and all life on Earth, and is inextricably linked to our climate system and climate change. It is vital to social and economic development, holds cultural and spiritual significance, and is essential for healthy and thriving ecosystems. However, societies today face multiple complex water challenges that include declining water availability and quality, unequal access, improper sewerage disposal and sanitation, and competing uses for food production, mining, industry and energy production. Solving these problems requires researchers to work across disciplines and outside of academia with communities, industry and finance to effect change.
Extensive academic literature on water security highlights the factors that lead to insecurities. It establishes the need for better governance, community engagement, decision analytics, financing, technologies, infrastructure provision and maintenance, water use, pollution and supply assessment with quantification of hydroclimatic uncertainty, to name a few. However, this literature lacks positive examples for achieving and maintaining water security. Discussion of strategies that lead to practical hard and soft water systems infrastructure is sparse.
The ASU Water Institute aims to address this gap at multiple levels, starting with how Arizona can create a secure water future for all its citizens and economic activities. This requires considering what forms of water, wastewater, flood control and governance infrastructure are best suited for different physical and socio-economic conditions, both within the United States and around the world.
To achieve this goal, we draw on the advances from a variety of disciplines—including sensors, data science, artificial intelligence, treatment technologies, systems management, decision science experience, finance, economics, law and emerging technologies for energy and agriculture—that integrally change regional and local options. We think of infrastructure broadly, from data and science-based governance systems, to point-of-use treatment and reuse of water, to atmospheric water harvesting, to weather modification at a planetary scale to steer storms and precipitation.
We welcome all to work with us to help develop and implement solutions from this modern perspective.
Meet the people who drive our impact.
Get to know the bright minds behind the ASU Water Institute.