This is an excerpt adapted from "数字水：实现更具弹性，安全和公平的水的未来“由威尔·萨尼（Will Sarni）。
Digital technologies and water
从相信水是丰富而自由的（或至少便宜的）到面对水短缺，水质差和气候变化与水文事件的变化的影响，世界正处于迅速而痛苦的转变。由于公共部门面临这样的意识，即迫切要求政策改革解决在弗林特，密歇根州和南非开普敦等城市中展开的人类悲剧，因此这种认识正在逐渐发展。开普敦并不孤单，因为其他全球城市面临类似的水短缺危机：印度班加罗尔；巴西圣保罗；中国北京;开罗，埃及;雅加达，印度尼西亚;伊斯坦布尔，土耳其;墨西哥墨西哥城；伦敦，英国; Miami, Florida, and Los Angeles, California.
私营部门还逐渐认识到水风险会影响业务的连续性和增长，以及他们在管理水作为共享资源方面的行动中的品牌价值。对于那些依靠水进行制造的行业（例如，食品，饮料，制造和半导体）获取水是当前运营和预计业务增长至关重要的。
What the world is now experiencing can no longer be framed as"normal." The past can no longer be used to predict seasonal weather events and precipitation (e.g., a loss of stationarity). Increasing population growth places demands on the need for water and negatively impacts water quality. As a result, there is a pressing need for: new public policies and business strategies; and innovation in technology, financing, business models and partnerships to thrive in the 21st century. These new policies, strategies and innovative solutions are only possible with better and accessible data and actionable information. We need to deploy digital solutions (information and communication technologies (ICT)) to enable the more efficient and effective use of water data for public sector business, societal, and ecosystem needs.
现在，水部门处于早期但加速的阶段，学习采用数字技术来解决水的稀缺和质量问题的价值。水部门通过数字技术的转化类似于其他部门的经验。电力部门也许提供了ICT益处的最相关的例子，并具有巨大的影响。转向智能建筑物和网格，微电网和可再生能源方面在提供新兴经济体和发达经济体的具有成本效益的电力方面具有变革性。通过全球电子可持续性倡议（GESI）的工作，通过采用ICT的总体影响和价值已得到充分证明。必威体育2018GESI量化了通过数字技术通过数字技术提高能源效率的方式，进而降低了温室气体的排放。
想象一下水部门相同的转变。诸如遥感之类的数字技术已经可以极大地改善对干旱和洪水的预测，对流域内的水量和质量的实时监控，改进的水电资产管理，离网和本地化解决方案以及实时水质质量监测和“无摩擦”水交易平台。数字技术，例如连接的设备（IoT），预测分析和人工智能，也成为实现可持续，弹性和公平水的强大工具。
We need to deploy digital solutions to enable the more efficient and effective use of water data for public sector business, societal and ecosystem needs.
最近，Gesi出版了”系统转换：数字解决方案将如何推动朝着可持续发展目标的进步。”摘要报告包括讨论ICT如何通过水效率来实现可持续发展目标6的核心作用，并通过“智能水管理”（智能管道，智能电表，土壤传感器，远程灌溉管理系统）增加获得水的机会，消费控制应用程序和电子填充。
What’s next?
该经济学家最近发行的一篇文章题为“瘟疫年：一切变化的一年”。这个标题很少会感到惊讶。然而，除了《共同的回顾》之外，本文还提供了有关从上个世纪初期从几个事件中学到的经验教训的见解。文章解释说：“第一次世界大战的恐怖和'西班牙流感'之后是咆哮的二十多岁，这可以以冒险的社会，工业和艺术新颖性为特征。”
In 1920, U.S. presidential candidate Warren Harding built his campaign around "normalcy." What unfolded was not a return to normal. According to the economist, the survivors of the Spanish Flu and the First World War left survivors with "an appetite to live the 1920s at speed."
I am willing to place a bet that our view of water, including the more traditional view of the water sector — think utilities, solutions providers, NGOs — will not return to normal. And, frankly, we shouldn’t go back. The water sector from a technology, business model and funding perspective will be transformed, driven by lessons learned from the pandemic but also due to the natural rhythm of "creative destruction."
I believe this is the year where creative destruction will transform the water sector and our view of water. In the early 20th century, the economist Joseph Schumpeter described the dynamic pattern in which innovative entrepreneurs unseat established firms through a process he called "creative destruction."
According to Schumpeter, and discussed in detail in "The Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction," it is the entrepreneur who not only creates invention but also creates competition from a new commodity, new technology, new source of supply, and a new type of organization. The entrepreneur creates competition, "which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives." This innovation propels the economy with "gales of creative destruction," which "incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."
斯图尔特·哈特（Stuart L.必威体育2018正是这篇文章首先使我对创意破坏的周期及其与水部门的相关性感到好奇。
对我来说，哈特（Hart）和米尔斯坦（Milstein）的关键是，通过技术创新，机构和社会发生了巨大的转变。技术创新 - 反过来又是机构和社会中的转型 - 对现任企业带来了深远的挑战。从历史上看，这些现有企业（已安装的基地）“尚未成功地建立在新竞争格局中获得职位所需的能力。”
创造性破坏和破坏性创新对水部门意味着什么？我相信，总的来说，这将是水的民主化。这将是围绕公共部门，基础设施和传统创新融资的“最终运行”，以提供通用和公平的安全饮用水，卫生和卫生。
我相信我们现在正在进入20多岁的咆哮。
The creative destruction of water will include real-time and actionable information on water quantity and quality and increased access to capital to scale innovative solutions such as air moisture capture, decentralizing water treatment and reuse systems at the residential and community scale.
The water sector is poised to undergo a "gale of creative destruction" to a large degree instigated by the pandemic. The accelerated transition to using digital technologies is also an enabling tool, in addition to providing readily accessible actionable information to the general population. I believe we are now entering the roaring '20s for water.
一个谨慎的单词（或两个）
我狂热地相信，数字技术的应用是水部门中最重要的趋势。但是，创新是笨拙的，结果可能是出乎意料的。我们需要注意的是，立即提高生产率并不是ICT行业和互联网的诞生很快。在美国，1990年代后期的劳工部统计数据表明，ICT行业的生产率提高。但是，这种生产力没有得到维持，并在2005年左右停滞不前。包括2008年经济衰退在内的几个因素。
Time will tell how the digital transformation of the water sector will unfold and if our predictions of value creation and productivity gains are realized and over what period of time. The central issue with digital transformation of a company, public sector, industry, etc., are people. It is wise to keep this issue at the forefront when we consider disruptive innovation such as digital technologies.
