Several members of the NAWI community were invited to participate in a strategic roadmapping process for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Engineering Directorate. Over 100 experts from academia, industry, and national laboratories gathered during a two-day virtual workshop organized by the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) on Engineered Systems for Water Security. The workshop focused on identifying key engineering challenges and research needs related to securing water for our communities and industries in the 21st century.
During the workshop, breakout groups discussed various aspects of a strategy for water security and teams came together to synthesize and distill the most resonant recommendations for engineering research investment. NAWI’s Master Cartographer David Sedlak provided a keynote for the event that, not surprisingly, drew upon many of the insights and strategic priorities that were identified during NAWI’s 2020 roadmapping process.
One measure of the strength of NAWI’s research vision is whether the themes and priorities we identified are also identified in other visioning exercises in the water sector. When the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) released a new report titled Engineered Systems for Water Security that includes a number of engineering research priorities to address water security issues, many of the research themes and priorities identified by NAWI were included in the report. The aim of this report is to inspire researchers and sponsors (public, private, and nonprofit) to pursue these priorities. Such was the consensus of participants at a recent visioning workshop convened by the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) to identify roles for the engineering research community in achieving secure water systems for the future.
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