Longitude Prize 2014: Water, water all over the place?

However, in the West, we frequently take this most treasured of all-natural assets for granted, despite the many campaigns we are exposed to reminding us that a single in ten of the world’s population has no entry to risk-free consuming water. If you don’t have clean water, you can’t grow healthful foods, and you are far more very likely to be sick and unable to perform or go to school, which implies you are much more likely to be trapped in poverty, with all the societal and protection problems that poverty brings. Globally, one in 5 deaths of children beneath 5 is due to dirty water.

I think our aim need to be to explore the improvement of new and emerging reduced-power and renewable power-driven desalination technologies, targeting a reduction in the distinct power consumption of seawater desalination to attain two kWh/m3 in the close to term, and developing a lot more sustainable desalination processes that are much less dependent on conventional vitality sources and that, consequently, are far more environmentally pleasant.

But there are so a lot of other questions we need to locate solutions to. What are the novel technologies for water desalination and reuse that we need to have to develop and exploit? How can we optimise and hybridise desalination and reuse technologies to supply enhanced overall performance?

How do we encourage (and incentivise?) water technologies for sustainable urban, agricultural and industrial applications? What study into urban and all-natural hydrologic techniques is necessary to boost our knowing and management of water sources?

And how do we make sure that the results of this study reach the widest achievable audience so that we can start to handle these problems on a global scale?

If we can answer some of these concerns and find a way to supply clean, safe water to everyone, irrespective of geographic and economic constraints, then we will, with no doubt, increase the wellness, properly-becoming, life possibilities and prosperity of billions of men and women.

Water protection is the most significant challenge we face. The Longitude Prize 2014 can be the catalyst that helps us to do something about it.

LONGITUDE PRIZE 2014

The Longitude Prize offers a £10 million prize fund for an innovation that will remedy one particular of the key problems of our time. And we can all assist to choose which of 6 themes the prize should target on. The 6 problems are:

• To support folks with dementia dwell independently for longer

• To assist prevent the rise of resistance to antibiotics

• To assist us to be capable to fly without having damaging the environment

• To assist make sure everyone has nutritious, sustainable food

• To aid restore motion to those with paralysis

• To support make certain everybody can have access to secure and clean water

You can vote for the challenge you consider the Longitude Prize need to pursue at bbc.co.united kingdom/horizon. Voting closes at seven.10pm on June 25 2014. The winning challenge will be announced on June 25 and will grow to be the target of the £10 million prize fund. The Longitude Committee will then finalise the criteria for how to win the prize, and from September ideas can be submitted. The Longitude Prize will run for up to 5 years.

Longitude Prize 2014: Water, water all over the place?