by Dieter Hensler, President & CEO, Aquanty Inc., Waterloo
The University of Waterloo, Aquanty Inc., and the IBM Canada Research and Development Centre are currently partnering to create a 3D hydrological model of water resources within the Grand River Watershed in southern Ontario — an area of approximately 7,000 square kilometers, and home to about 1 million people. We’re using detailed climate projections and hydrological model to assess the impact of global warming on water quality and water quantity — a model that is being used nationally and internationally. With our model, we aim to answer questions such as: How are fertilizers impacting water quality? How will climate change affect stream flows and wetlands? What are the best ways now, to protect our water resources for the future?
Water is arguably our most valuable resource, and it requires careful and effective management to ensure that it will be protected for generations to come. Creating optimal strategies for the management of water resources requires tools that allow us to understand the impact of climate change and man-made changes. For example, despite climate change being a global phenomenon, climate change simulations show that the distribution of precipitation will not be uniform, meaning that some areas will become wetter while others become drier. This non-uniform shift in weather patterns, means that each region, and perhaps each watershed, needs to be assessed individually to truly understand what will happen to water resources.
Predicting the effect of climate change on the hydrological cycle within a watershed, and developing strategies to manage the water resource in a sustainable fashion, requires cutting-edge simulation tools. These tools must be able to incorporate climate forecasts to drive hydrological simulations (both groundwater and surface water) in order to support informed decision making for water policy and management. As you might imagine, these simulations require state-of-the-art computer hardware and access to high performance computing facilities. That is why academia, government and industry have come together through the Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP) to use high performance computing to tackle complex problems related to water, health, energy and cities.
Canada and Ontario have long been leaders in water research and innovation, particularly through the Experimental Lakes Area research facility on freshwater ecosystems (since 1969), and numerous water institutes across the country, including; the Canadian Water Network (CWN), the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) and the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo. Canada’s leadership in water research was recently recognized by Lux Research who named the University of Waterloo a Top 10 International Water Research Institute.
At Aquanty, our business is all about water— specifically water resource analytics. We have more than 15 years of leading research and software development experience. Our scientists and cutting-edge simulation technology provide risk and uncertainty analyses of manmade and natural changes to sensitive water ecosystems. Offering expert services that lead to better decision making for water resource sustainability is very rewarding work. Canada can be very proud of their water scientists who are globally recognized as leaders in this extremely important field of research.
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