New InterLink: July 2021 edition

Water deficiency is one of the biggest challenges of our time, and the problem will grow exponentially in the coming decades. Today, 2.1 billion people do not have safe water in their homes and in 2025, it is expected that 1.8 billion people will live with absolute water deficiency. In Europe alone, 60% of all cities with more than 100,000 citizens will face problems before 2030 if they continue with their current water management. 

Globally, the water infrastructure is underrated, underfinanced and poorly maintained. But to increase the focus on the importance of water compared to all of the other great challenges the world is facing, we at AVK have chosen to produce a booklet with facts about water. This booklet focuses on the importance of water for climate, energy, health, food production, and development of societies to name a few of the topics. In our opinion, not enough resources are assigned to this topic globally and therefore, our aim is to make leaders and decision-makers aware of the fact that the global water issue not only concerns obtaining clean drinking water, but equally concerns health, people’s well-being and the development of societies. 

Clean water acts as a catalyst for economic growth. If USD 1 is invested in the water infrastructure, the private GDP output will increase to more than USD 6. With this in mind, we hope to be able to initiate projects within water infrastructure and to support this, we have asked leading people within the water sector to provide quotes for the material. You can read more on this topic on page 24.

I have said it before, but I will say it again: Covid-19 has clearly shown that digitalisation is the answer to a more agile way of doing business while simultaneously offering far greater mobility in operating a water supply. How? AVK Smart Water can give you the answer you are looking for by assisting with monitoring and reporting on leakages. One thing is to detect leakages in the distribution net, another thing is to repair a pipe and close the leak. An essential factor in the attempt to minimise water loss is “speed of repair”, which puts pressure on the supply chain to deliver repair kits. You can read examples of AVK’s solutions on pages 4-5 and 6-7. AVK is able to deliver repair clamps from DN32 to DN3000.

But as always, AVK takes part in a great number of exciting projects around the world, and you can read about some of these in this edition of InterLink.