Water scarcity
is one of the defining challenges of the coming decades. A growing
population will put additional pressure on available water resources.
Already, 10% of the world’s population experiences high water stress. Moreover, water use has grown at twice the rate of population growth,
worsening the crisis but revealing that we can achieve significant
positive impacts if we take decisive actions. By 2050, ensuring food
security, reducing water stress, and avoiding water scarcity will be
critical priorities.
Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)
is a process for coordinating water development, management, and use
across human activities and ecosystems. The IWRM process requires
informed decisions supported by comprehensive data, data that integrates
and transforms the outputs of complex hydrologic models into indicators
of the water resources conditions. These indicators estimate and define
factors such as water stress, depletion, and associated risks including
flood, drought, coastal, and regulatory risks. Tools that translate
complex hydrological data into decision-relevant indicators, such as the
Aqueduct tools are essential.
Aqueduct 4.0 provides water risk assessments for a baseline period (1979-2019) and three future projection periods:
2015-2045
2035-2065
2065-2095
And under three climate and development scenarios:
Optimistic Scenario (SSP1-RCP2.6)
Business-as-usual Scenario (SSP3-RCP7.0)
Pessimistic Scenario (SSP5-RCP8.5)
The projections leverage CMIP6 climate forcings and the PCR-GLOBWB 2
hydrological model. In addition, Aqueduct includes sector-specific
weighting schemes to evaluate water-related risks across different
industries.
Aqueduct provides a comprehensive framework that evaluates 13 distinct water risk indicators across three main categories:
Physical Risks – Quantity: These indicators assess
water availability and variability, including: Water Stress, Water
Depletion, Interannual Variability, or Groundwater Table Decline,
Riverine Flood Risk, Coastal Flood Risk or Drought Risk
Physical Risks – Quality: Water quality indicators that affect usability: Untreated Connected Wastewater, or Coastal Eutrophication Potential
Regulatory and Reputational Risks: Governance and
access indicators: Unimproved/No Drinking Water, Unimproved/No
Sanitation: percentage of population without access to improved
sanitation
Aqueduct in Living Atlas
The Aqueduct item in Living Atlas includes three layers: Future Annual, which provides water risk indicators for three future time periods under multiple climate scenarios; Baseline Annual, which offers indicators for the historical baseline period (1979–2019) to establish benchmarks for comparison; and Baseline Monthly, which delivers monthly water stress and depletion data, particularly useful for regions with distinct wet and dry seasons.
Cartography
These layers are designed to work with a diverse set of Esri Basemaps.
The colors have high saturation values in anticipation for users to
have more functionality with their own map styles. They are also
designed to be used with Layer Effects, Blend Modes, and Transparency to
further enhance their visualization.
Here are three examples: (1) Baseline Annual on the National
Geographic Basemap with Multiply Layer Effect; (2) Future Annual with
Multiply and Drop Shadow on the Charted Territory Basemap; and (3)
Baseline Monthly with Multiply on the Environment Basemap with the
labels using the Invert Layer Effect.
Each layer has customizable symbology and pop-ups tailored to its specific focus:
– Future (Annual)
The symbology displays a bivariate map of gross water demand and
water availability for the business-as-usual scenario (2065-2095). This
visualization highlights contrasts between high-demand, low-availability
areas (orange), high-demand, high-availability areas (purple),
low-demand, high-availability areas (light blue), and low-demand,
low-availability areas (grey).
The pop-up shows projected demand and availability, along with water
stress projections for all three time periods and scenarios.
The baseline annual layer uses baseline water stress for symbology,
highlighting watersheds with extremely high or high overall water risk.
The pop-up summarizes water risks by category: (1) Physical Risks
Quantity, (2) Physical Risks Quality, and (3) Regulatory and
Reputational Risks. It also displays interannual variability by month to
show whether conditions vary drastically throughout the year or remain
relatively stable.
Note that watershed names are not included in the Aqueduct dataset but are retrieved dynamically using an ArcGIS Arcade expression from the Global Water Provinces layer from Utrecht University. This blog post explains how on-the-fly expressions can be used, with an example using OpenStreetMap data and GEOGLOWS.
– Baseline (monthly)
The pop-up displays seasonal and interannual variability, along with monthly water stress and depletion charts.
Rather than showing results for a specific month, the layer displays
major basins identified by the first three digits of the Pfafstetter
code.
Like other Living Atlas layers, Aqueduct layers can be added to
custom maps, used in ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Pro analysis, and filtered
to focus on specific risk categories or indicators. For example, custom
layer views can display:
Basins with extremely high baseline water stress (score > 4.0)
Areas with declining groundwater tables
Areas facing both physical and regulatory water risks
Summary
Aqueduct 4.0 is now available in Living Atlas, bringing one of the world’s most comprehensive water risk datasets to the ArcGIS Online
platform. As part of the Living Atlas collection, Aqueduct joins
authoritative datasets on environment, climate, and demographics to
support better decisions and strengthen integrated water resources
management processes. Aqueduct drives actionable strategies to reduce
water scarcity in the years ahead.
This map compares U.S. fertility rates by state in 2007 and 2025, showing a nationwide decline from an average of about 2.12 births per woman to roughly 1.58, well below…
This chart from the Financial Times illustrates the significant ongoing volatility in precious metals,
. . .speculators have effectively sidelined institutional investors for the time being.
Gold is currently trading down 5%, while silver has slumped 10%.
The pressing question is how long this speculative shakeout will last—and just how much damage we should expect.
All we know for sure is that the extraordinary rise in the prices of both, while driven by fundamental factors, attracted lots of speculators.
Meanwhile, oil prices have also fallen, with Brent down 5%, following a slight cooling in the fundamentally tense relations between Iran and the US.
#economy#markets#oil#gold#silver
Zelensky has once again criticised certain European countries for not acknowledging what he called “a reality”. More specifically he has stated that certain European countries don’t take the threat by Vladimir Putin as seriously as they should. He has also stated that Vladimir Putin is not afraid of the Europeans, but he is afraid of Trump.
Zelenskyy criticises Europe for living in a bubble: if Ukraine falls, Putin will push further
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin "is not afraid ofEuropeans" and warned that if Ukraine falls, the war will inevitably spill over into European Union countries.
Source:Zelenskyy in an interview with French broadcasterFrance 2
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday 5 October that Russian
leader Vladimir Putin's proposal to voluntarily maintain limits on
deployed strategic nuclear weapons"sounds like a good idea".
Alar Karis and Evika Silina have stated that Europe needs to be at the negotiations table, with Alar Karis acknowledging that it should have been the EU to start the negotiations with Russia first, not the US. As of today, the NEW START Treaty has expired and Russia says it no longer sees itself bound by the previous limitations imposed by the treaty.
Russia says it no longer considers itself bound by limits on nuclear arsenal
A Russian RS-24 Yars strategic missile system. Photo: Getty Images
Russia's Foreign Ministry issued a statement on 4 Februaryin connection with the fact that the New START nuclear weapons control treaty is due to expire on 5 February.
