{"id":13110,"date":"2023-03-22T09:43:35","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T08:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imif.lukasiewicz.gov.pl\/?p=13110"},"modified":"2023-03-24T08:00:01","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T07:00:01","slug":"worldwaterday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imif.lukasiewicz.gov.pl\/en\/worldwaterday\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Talk About Water Quality Monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billions of people don\u2019t have access to safe drinking water \u2013 we are all aware of this but\u2026 we don\u2019t think of the water crisis on a daily basis even though it has been touching our lives here in Europe for years and it\u2019s unfortunately getting worse with time.<\/p>\n

As the European Environment Agency stated on their website: \u201eWater scarcity affected 29% of the EU territory during at least one season in 2019. (\u2026) Since 2010 there has been a worsening of the situation. (\u2026) This, compounded with the fact that climate change is expected to further increase the frequency, intensity, and impacts of drought events.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question is \u2013 what can we do to handle this crisis? We should think of little steps\u2026 step by step, meaning taking actions such as \u00a0the following:<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd36 taking shorter showers<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd36 creating rain gardens<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd36 buying local, seasonal food<\/p>\n

To get more ideas on how to save water go to\u00a0www.unwater.org\/bethechange<\/a><\/p>\n

But water crisis doesn\u2019t just come down to lack of water, there\u2019s also the problem of water quality (as we have said at the beginning) \u2013 how clean or polluted it is \u2013 do you remember that the Oder river in Poland was extremely polluted last summer? To ensure that water is safe, it needs to be monitored: “Lack of real-time data is one of the biggest detriments of effective water management. The faster we know, the faster we can act. How do we achieve that? By using technology that is highly sensitive and communicative of even the smallest changes in water” \u2013 said Kiranmai Uppuluri, our researcher, on water sensors developed at \u0141ukasiewicz \u2013 IMiF.<\/p>\n

Traditional water sensors are bulky, and made of glass, and if we hit them, they will break. In our Institute we are trying to replace them with sensors that are:<\/p>\n