48. 22-03-21 WET10 Conference – Which Way Water 2050

It was with great pleasure that I introduced this year’s WET10 Conference titled “Which Way Water 2050”. The event was hosted by Deputy Master Mark Lane and featured 3 eminent speakers on the future of the water industry.

Chris Gray, Head of Water - Europe, Middle East & Africa, AECOM, spoke first about “Resilient Cities”. Chris began his presentation by explaining the need for more resilience cities in the future, as for the first time in history over 50% of the world’s population would be living in cities, with the demand for water increasing by 55%. Water is one of the top ten risks over the next 10 years with a water crisis named as the risk with the fourth largest impact. He then highlighted some of the key challenges we face and gave examples of how these future challenges could be met both for new cities such as Neom, KSA and existing cities such as London. In conclusion Chris said that in order to build resilience for future cities we needed to radically change the way we think about water, driving innovation to ensure we have the capacity or resources to meet demand increases in a sustainable way.

The second presentation on “Digital Water from 2021 to 2050 – A Brief History of the Future” was by Joanna Kelsey, Head of UK Water Digital Services, Stantec. Joanna began by explaining how digital water will be critical for the future, but humans will still play a vital part in delivering the outcomes in unison with digital technology. In the future digital water will protect the environment by the holistic management of the catchment enabling a higher level of collaborative management to minimise the environmental impact. Digital water will create improved resilience as local knowledge is embedded in the control philosophy and automated operational decisions and Digital water will also enable better engagement with the customer by providing transparency of system performance.

The final presentation “Water 2050 - Developing the Skills for Tomorrow’s Challenges” was by Phil Beach CBE - Chief Executive, Energy & Utility Skills. He suggested that it was not about developing the skills for 2050 but more about ensuring we have the ability to adjust the skill set quickly to adapt to rapidly changing requirements. So, in order to meet the skill set required for 2050 we should be focusing on an architecture that can adapt to rapidly changing technology rather than focusing on specific skills that may or may not be needed.

The presentations were then followed by a fascinating question and answer session led by Deputy Master Mark Lane. 151 participants attended the conference, a record for our virtual events so far. On behalf of everyone I would again like to thank our speakers, Deputy Master Mark Lane for organising and host the event, Past Master Simon Catford for managing the zoom technology, and also give my thanks to everyone who attended making the conference a great success.