Envisioning the Future of Water in the UK: Exploring Digital Water and its Imaginaries

Abstract

As global climate change impacts and increases the uncertainty about water and its availability, quality, as well as the resilience of urban water infrastructure, the water sector is being transformed to react to those future challenges towards a more sustainable and resilient water management, whilst simultaneously encountering the Megatrend of digitalisation which introduces big data analytics, artificial intelligence and other new technologies to implement new functionalities for the management of water.

Statements such as „The Future of Water is Digital“ (Sarni 2020) as well as similar comments are made within the discourse of digital water. It is characterised through two distinct argumentative pathways: on the one hand is technological solutionism (Morozov 2013), presenting digital technologies as the only solution to the challenges within the water sector, and on the other hand socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff 2015) of the future are constituting digital water as a new pathway within the water sector. Portraying a positive and optimistic future for the development of the water sector which is achieved through the implementation of digital technologies. With the increasing adoption of digital water technologies, their role in the spatial production processes increases.

This can for example be seen in the english water sector. The East of England is one of the fastest growing region by population and is also one of the driest regions in the United Kingdom with only around 600 mm average annual rainfall — approximately 70 % of the national average. The Strategic Pipeline Alliance Project led by Anglian Water is a large-scale, holistically linked water transfer system aiming to tackle future water shortages by transferring water from „wetter to drier areas“ (Anglian Water 2023). The Strategic Pipeline Alliance is one of the largest infrastructure projects in Europe, with 420 km of pipeline being build and is operated, performance managed and maintained using a digital twin. Through analyzing the Strategic Pipeline Alliance Project and the underlying future visions, for the application of digital technologies in the English water sector, implications and effects on the production of space through the notion of digital water are considered.

Sources:

Anglian Water. 2023. New water pipelines. Zugriff 22.2.2023.
https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/about-us/our-strategies-and-plans/new-water-pipelines/.

Jasanoff, Sheila (2015): „Future Imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity. „ In Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, hrsg. v. Sheila Jasanoff und Sang-Hyun Kim, 1-33. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1-33.

Morozov, Evgeny. 2013. To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutions. New York: PublicAffaris.

Sarni, Will. 2020. The Future of Water is Digital. The Solutions Journal 11(2). 
https://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/article/future-water-digital/.