With an increasing population and rising temperatures, uncertainty around future water supplies is one of the key concerns facing communities around the world. More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean, safe drinking water while every year 100 million people are affected by floods and droughts.
Investigating how water resources might be more effectively managed, while also exploring potential safeguards against hazardous shortages or increases in supply, is one of the primary concerns of the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute for the Environment. Our researchers are focused on finding evidence-based solutions to everything from the management of reservoirs, predicting the risk of environment-driven disease, water shortages in cold regions and how rapid urbanisation alters water quality.
Professor Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute, said: “The Cabot Institute is home to some of the world’s best water resources researchers – ranking first in the UK and fourth in Europe by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.
"We are proud to be supporting research and innovation that makes a difference both here in Bristol, and around the world.”
Leading the water research community at the University of Bristol are Professor Thorsten Wagener from the Water Engineering group and Professor Jim Freer from the Hydrology group. Professor Thorsten Wagener, lead of the Cabot Institutes Water Theme, commented: “Our ambition is to transform the evidence base on which water-related decisions are made in a continuously changing and uncertain world, through more robust predictive models and better monitoring of the water cycle.
"As well as having strong internal capacity, we are also part of the GW4 Water Security alliance; bringing together academics from the four GW4 institutions addressing the impact of global change on water to benefit people and ecosystems.”
The University of Bristol is also committed to managing its spaces responsibility.
By encouraging energy and water efficient practices and investing in its estate to reduce carbon emissions and water consumption, the University aims to be a net carbon neutral campus by 2030.
Examples of improvements include a significant reduction in the University’s water consumption - in 2016/17 we were 28% below consumption in the baseline year of 2007/08 - and the Sustainable Labs initiative goes from strength to strength, in the last year helping realise savings of £86,650. This includes energy and water saving activity, and procurement savings.
Martin Wiles, the University of Bristol’s Head of Sustainability, said: “Although the carbon mitigation impact of water use is small, there is an increasing need to reduce our reliance on water resources to play our part in climate change adaptation, in an increasingly water-stressed world.”
City-wide initiatives in Bristol are also supported by the University. City to Sea is a non-profit organisation running campaigns to prevent marine plastic pollution at source. The Refill campaign is the first project to be run by City to Sea with the aim of encouraging people to reuse plastic bottles by working with local businesses around the city to make refilling as easy as possible. There are now over 200 refill points across Bristol’s city centre, including the several around the University campus.
Join us in marking in World Water Day 2018 and follow our stories on social media: #WorldWaterDay @cabotinstitute