Safe Global Water(SGW): Building Partnerships for Sustainable Global Access to Safe Water and Sanitation

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT The international workshop on Safe Global Water(SGW): Building Partnerships for Sustainable Global Access to Safe Water and Sanitation will address the global challenge of fostering the economic growth of the most impoverished one billion people of the world by improving their quality of life and productivity through access to safe water for human consumption and food security, and sanitation for resource recovery (energy, nutrients) and revenue generation. To achieve this, the SGW workshop will bring together an unprecedented global coalition of researchers from social and natural sciences, and engineering coupled with global stakeholders and practitioners from government and international agencies, non-governmental organizations, and industry. The following workshop objectives are highly resonant with EFRI: (1) Explore effective strategies based on cutting edge research co-located at U.S. and target nations to make revolutionary advances in science and technology in safe water and sanitation while simultaneously building capacity into higher education institutions; and (2) Explore innovative approaches to impact technology design, acceptance, and sustainability through integrated multinational teams of engineers partnered with social and natural scientists. The SGW international workshop will bring stakeholders from around the world to address the challenges of providing safe water and sanitation to developing countries and emerging communities. This challenge can only be addressed with transformational advances in safe water and sanitation technologies that are developed for the socio-cultural contexts in which they will be used. Such advances require a global coalition of strategically selected academic, entrepreneurial, industrial, practitioner, governmental, and NGO partners. This workshop will form the foundation upon which existing and new partnerships can be grown. Having all of the stakeholders, academic and otherwise, together for an intensive workshop will allow a new paradigm in safe water and sanitation solutions that will be technically and socially sustainable. This international gathering of research and policy leaders with a vested interest in Safe Global Water will represent: universities, national agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, industry, and graduate students. This workshop will have at its focus an unprecedented engagement of basic scientists, engineers, social scientists, policy makers, and stakeholders to create a plan to solve the technical SGW needs of the target countries while simultaneously building human capacity and micro-marketplaces within locally sustainable socio-cultural contexts. The targeted outcome of the workshop to formulate and initiate research on safe global water and sanitation at the boundaries of basis science, engineering, and social sciences through higher education based international collaborations is a paradigm shift that will lead to fundamental advances in the understanding of safe water and sanitation issues while also producing an interdisciplinary and international education environment that will better prepare U.S. students for working in the ever growing global research context.