News Article
December 14, 2016
iUTAH Researchers Honored at AWRA Annual Conference
Three Utah State University researchers, Enjie Li, Joanna Endter-Wada, and Shujuan Li, were recognized with the 2016 William R. Boggess Award for their paper detailing water management challenges faces by the world's 28 megacities. The award was presented at the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) Annual Conference, held Nov. 13-17, in Orlando, FL.
An excerpt from a USU press release said that “supplying water is a major challenge for all of the study sites… each city's situation is unique. For example, Beijing and Mumbai struggle to supply sufficient drinking water, while dealing with too much stormwater. Los Angeles and Tokyo have the capability to recycle water to meet drinking water quality standards, but face social opposition to use of this water source.
‘These challenges have serious implications - especially when you consider one in eight urban dwellers currently lives in one of the world's megacities,’ Enjie Li says. ‘Further, conservative growth projections by the U.N. predict another 13 cities will become megacities by 2030.’ Though the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, with a population of about 1.14 million, is long from approaching megacity status, it also faces growing pressure from urbanization - especially in terms of water resources.
‘There are common threads between big cities and little cities and we have much to learn from megacities,’ says Endter-Wada, who serves as a team member for the statewide, NSF-funded iUTAH project. ‘Utah is growing rapidly. It's easier to prepare for challenges, than to fix problems after the fact.’ ”
The article for which they won the awards was published in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association in June 2015, under the title Characterizing And Contextualizing The Water Challenges Of Megacities.
Press: EurekAlert!
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