Reviews & Analysis

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  • The approach based on analysing wastewater to monitor drugs or pathogens in the population had been used for decades before it became widespread during the COVID 19 pandemic. We have asked experts located in a number of different nations to share their views on the potential and limitations of wastewater-based epidemiology in the future.

    • Andrew C. Singer
    • Janelle R. Thompson
    • Kevin V. Thomas
    Viewpoint
  • In this Perspective, the authors survey potential water-system-wide benefits of AI applications from catchments to end-users and then highlight potential systemic barriers, direct risks and exposures to cascading failures, which may prove catastrophic for communities. In response, they make three recommendations for safe and responsible deployment of AI across potable water supply and sewage disposal systems.

    • Catherine E. Richards
    • Asaf Tzachor
    • Richard Fenner
    Perspective
  • Wet getting wetter and dry getting dryer, or global aridification? This Review examines the applicability and limits of both hypotheses across different frameworks, scales and contexts, providing insights on hydrologic change and the future of water availability.

    • Benjamin F. Zaitchik
    • Matthew Rodell
    • Sonia I. Seneviratne
    Review Article
  • Recent toxicological studies have indicated that the poorly characterized high-molecular-weight fraction of disinfection by-products may contribute more to toxicity than the carbon disinfection by-products of current research interest. This Review summarizes what is known about the high-molecular-weight fraction and suggests pathways for future research in this area.

    • William A. Mitch
    • Susan D. Richardson
    • Michael Gonsior
    Review Article
  • Although more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, there is a dire lack of data on trade, cost, and origin of the food that the urban dwellers rely on. Understanding the impact of escalating water-food systems variability on urban quality of life is critical for designing data systems needed to implement appropriate policies and state-supported interventions in urban areas.

    • Molly E. Brown
    • Kathryn L. Grace
    News & Views
  • Examination of boil water alerts (BWAs) in Jackson, Mississippi points to the breadth and diversity of impact from water contamination. We describe these impacts and the larger context and limitations of BWAs as ways of both informing the public and mitigating risk.

    • Matthew Seeger
    • Shawn P. McElmurry
    News & Views
  • This Perspective characterizes the major challenges to open-access water data in China. A potential data management infrastructure to improve the collection, sharing, and use of water data is outlined.

    • Jingyu Lin
    • Brett A. Bryan
    • Zhifeng Yang
    Perspective
  • A cost-effective process to achieve defluorination of chlorinated per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) provides valuable insight for sustainable chemical design.

    • Zulin Zhang
    • Yongfei Ma
    News & Views
  • Drinking water treatment technologies are typically evaluated on the basis of narrow evaluation criteria, such as contaminant removal efficiency. This Perspective proposes additional user-centric criteria to evaluate the hidden and often gendered costs of water treatment technologies, including affordability, labour burden and user acceptance.

    • Katya Cherukumilli
    • Isha Ray
    • Amy J. Pickering
    Perspective
  • Iron-rich aquifers are commonly thought to be ‘arsenic-safe’ because of the strong sorption of arsenite and arsenate to iron (hydr)oxides. However, sulfate reduction can accelerate arsenic mobilization and increase arsenic mobility by formation of poorly sorbing thioarsenic species

    • Britta Planer-Friedrich
    News & Views
  • Decentralized water treatment technologies could help in addressing global key water issues. This Perspective reviews the literature on the psychological determinants of acceptance, support and behaviour change related to decentralized water treatment technologies and proposes a user-focused theory of change to guide the promotion of these technologies.

    • Nadja Contzen
    • Josianne Kollmann
    • Hans-Joachim Mosler
    Perspective
  • Strategies for mitigating climate change driven floods in Shanghai apply regret theory to guide the best choice from alternate engineered flood control scenarios.

    • David King
    News & Views
  • Water infrastructure improvements are needed in rural America. A series of county-level spatial econometric models showed positive economic development associated with water infrastructure spending in rural America. However, these benefits are unequally distributed among ethnoracial populations in interaction models.

    • Yolanda J. McDonald
    News & Views
  • Curtailing water use during drought is costly, but those costs are not evenly distributed. Socio–hydrological modelling shows how water burdens fall more heavily on poor households in response to water conservation policies.

    • Casey J. Wichman
    News & Views
  • The story of satellite gravimetry’s progression from the fringes of hydrology to being a staple of large-scale water cycle and water resources science and the sole source of global observations of terrestrial water storage now an ‘essential climate variable’.

    • Matthew Rodell
    • John T. Reager
    Review Article