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Home > About > News > Supporting creative solutions to complex water challenges
March 22, 2024
Learn more about how Alberta Innovates is tackling complex water challenges in a changing world.
As 2024 progresses, water, or the lack thereof, is hitting the headlines. The province has announced an early start to wildfire season and launched water sharing negotiations with major water license holders. We need water for all aspects of our lives; to drink, to produce the food we eat, to make the clothes we wear, and to support the natural ecosystems around us. It powers our lives and our economies.
Tough decisions are going to have to be made – and are already being made – by governments and our communities to ensure that we have the water we need for the necessities. But managing this drought is going to be about more than just turning off our sprinklers and taking shorter showers.
Our cities, industries and utilities are going to have to find better ways of managing, using and reusing the water available to us. This is all part of the work Alberta Innovates does.
Water challenges are complex and they require new ways of looking at problems to solve them. They require things like better understanding where our water comes from within our cities and our province as a whole, planning for how we can manage drought across communities and levels of government, using technology like AI to find efficiencies in our systems, and finding ways to have nature do some of the hard work for us.
These are just some of the projects underway here at Alberta Innovates. While these projects represent the work being supported through our Water Innovation Program grants, we do more than just fund great ideas and great technology. We have established a support network that also includes business advice, analytical capacity, testing facilities and more. If we can’t help, we usually know who can.
This article is part of Making Waves, an annual Alberta Innovates publication highlighting water solutions we support. You can read more stories from this issue below.
March 20, 2024
Learn how Alberta Innovates' Water Innovation Program has grown since its conception.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers are setting out to untangle the connections between groundwater and surface water in the Edmonton region of the North Saskatchewan River Basin.
A team of engineers at C-FER Technologies developed an Inland Waterway Simulator to find better ways to clean up after oil spill events.
The Alberta Water Council has taken proactive steps by bringing together a team of industry, government, First Nations and non-governmental organizations to address the province’s water management...
H2nanO are developing a sustainable, low-carbon and cost-effective water treatment solution for tailings ponds to ensure more water is available for reuse and potentially even release.
InnoTech Alberta is leading a project to explore mountain, surface and ground water hydrology.
A new water treatment facility in Drayton Valley is piloting Artificial Intelligence to enhance both the environmental sustainability and the cost-effectiveness of their operations.
If wetlands are the model of effective water treatment, why not put nature in control of our wastewater and stormwater? Innovators right here in Alberta are doing just that.