Volume 1 Issue 1, January 2023

Academics, funders and publishers need to support interdisciplinary research processes in which social sciences are placed on an equal footing with the natural sciences and engineering.

Since water is a common good, the outcome of water-related research should be accessible to everyone. Since Open Science is more than just open access research articles, journals must work with the research community to enable fully open and FAIR science

While the benefits of FAIR principles — findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable — and Open Data seem clear to most scientists, significant hurdles need to be overcome to make scientific databases useful and sustainable. The difficulties with incentivizing the community to share data, as encountered by the recently launched Open Membrane Database (OMD), can be used as a starting point to fuel the debate on the power and pitfalls of FAIR and Open Data practices.

The way in which human society uses water is continuously evolving. The present challenges related to clean water availability require the development of sustainable technologies and infrastructure. Furthermore, a stronger and wider appreciation of water inequalities and injustice demand an adequate transformation of water governance at local and global scale. We have asked nine experts in various sectors of water-related research to share their views on how water and sanitation science, technology and governance must evolve to meet the requirements of a healthier relationship between water and society.

Development of the world’s hydropower is controversial because of its many documented environmental and societal implications. A global assessment of the unused profitable hydropower potential is performed with strict criteria to limit the environmental and social impact.

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.

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.

The design of an electrochemical system without electrolytes allows hydrogenation of oxidized contaminants in water without the introduction of additional chemicals.

Global groundwater resources are under strain, with cascading effects on producers, food and fibre production systems, communities and ecosystems. In this Perspective, the authors call for a major shift in research, extension and policy priorities to build polycentric governance capacity and strategic planning tools to sustain aquifer-dependent communities.

Recovering metals from wastewater and brine could augment metal stocks that are fundamental to modern technology. This Perspective assesses the potential of, and provides guidance for, recovering metals from wastewater and brine.

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’.

Mt Fuji’s freshwater springs were believed to be fed exclusively by shallow groundwater aquifers. Using a newly developed combination of tracer techniques, this study finds widespread vertical exchange between shallow and deeper aquifers and shows evidence of a substantial deep groundwater contribution to the springs.

Local government investment in water infrastructure is associated with rural economic development in the United States. Through the use of interactional models, the economic benefits are shown to be ethnically and racially uneven.

Unaffordable water prices pose a threat to human health and well-being. A socio-hydrological modelling approach that integrates hydrology, water infrastructure, utility decision-making and household behaviour can be used to understand the impacts of droughts on household water affordability

Electrocatalytic hydrogenation is an efficient process for treating oxidized contaminants in water. The use of a rhodium nanoparticle-modified palladium membrane electrochemical reactor presents a practical, safe and efficient approach to the treatment of water and can be applied to the hydrogenation of 12 different oxidized contaminants.

Efficient ways to disinfect water from bacterial contamination are essential for public health. Locally enhanced electric field treatment can be used to induce ultrafast bacteria inactivation with nanosecond electrical pulses.

The development of hydropower offers a renewable energy source that can help reduce society’s dependence on fossil fuels. A global assessment of the unused profitable hydropower potential can be performed by incorporating strict constraints to identify hydropower station locations with reduced environmental and societal impacts.