Aqueduct.

Analyzing the severity of water-related challenges globally.

Understanding water risk is essential for human survival and to assess global access to water for drinking, crops irrigation, industrial production and sanitation. The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas uses open-source, peer reviewed data to map water risks such as floods, droughts, and stress.

Guide decision-making where action on water stress is needed.

Go-to tools for reputable reporting on water stress.

Aqueduct data and insights have been featured in major media outlets supporting detailed story-telling on water stress sound the globe, including the Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, the New York Times, The Washington Post  and Vox’s Netflix show Explained.

Highest water stress of all time.

25 countries housing ¼ of the global population face extreme water stress every year, expected to increase by 1 billion more people in 2050.

Water scarcity #1 driver of public health crisis.

Most global health crises are linked to water; floods, droughts and water-borne diseases. Over half the world are without adequate sanitation services.

Water means basic human survival.

2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. Agricultural, including for growing essential food, uses 70% of the world’s freshwater.

Developing Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas.

The brief.

The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas brings together a range of indicators that are combined to calculate water risk. It provides a close-up view of water threats and opportunities around the world, to guide decision-making on where and when action is needed.

The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and its web tools are from a collaboration between WRI's research partners and a coalition of corporations, governmental bodies, and charitable foundations. The Atlas and tools hold significance in the context of tracking advancements toward the goals outlined in SDG 6, specifically target 6.4, which strives to ensure sustainable extraction and provision of freshwater to combat water scarcity by 2030, and target 6.6, which aims to safeguard and rehabilitate water-related ecosystems such as rivers, aquifers, and lakes by 2020.

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Our role.

Vizzuality worked with the World Resources Institute to modernize the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas expanding the suite of tools to include country rankings, food and agricultural water risk, and flood risk analysis.

We developed the interface, modeling and analysis capabilities for the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas. We equipped the tool with a Country Rankings function featuring comprehensive and up-to-date statistics related to water resources, a Food and Agricultural Water Risk feature and a Flood Risk Analysis feature. For these functions, we created the interface, visualizations, and implemented data management features. For the Flood Risk Analysis feature we also created an API service which enables users to calculate a wide range of flood risk scenarios and their associated costs.

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Delivered with impact.

Customization for rapid data.

To deliver data in the fastest, most accurate way, we custom built a microservice that allows the user to select or upload points of interest and receive back the relevant information from the risk model developed by WRI. The service is built on top of CARTO, the Resource Watch API and Google’s Geocoder.

Aqueduct.

Client

Client type

Topic

Services

Analyzing the severity of water-related challenges globally.

Guide decision-making where action on water stress is needed.

Go-to tools for reputable reporting on water stress.

Developing Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas.

The brief.

Our role.

Delivered with impact.

Customization for rapid data.

Next project

Resource Watch.

Monitoring the planet’s pulse.

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