Water Management Infographics From IBM

Some water management infographics from the 'smarter water management' folks at IBM. 

Here is a PDF:  Download Us__en_us__water__water_infographic_031512

The first two are taken from the Watercache Blog.

Note added on 23 July 2012: Friend and alert reader Peter Boddie emailed to let me know that this frst graphic is grossly misleading. He calculated that there about 76,000 drops per gallon, divided into 31,557,600 seconds per year = 415 gallons per year. A far cry from 27,000 gallons! 

I thought Peter's figure might be a bit low, so I used the USGS calculator and obtained about 2100 gallons per year. The USGS used a larger volume for a drop (0.25 mL) than did Peter. Keep in mind that a drop is an imprecise measure of volume (check this converter).

I got the same figure as the USGS doing the calculations by hand.

The IBM website says the figure of 27,000 gallons per year is from ASCE. I checked the ASCE WWW site: it has 2,700 gallons per year.

Looks like the 'smarter water management' folks cannot transpose figures correctly.

Upshot: Estimating the water wasted by a leaking faucet is not straightforward unless you actually measure it.

Makes you wonder about the validity of the other figures. So much for 'smarter water management'!

See Chris Maxwell-Gaines' comment below.

And some more water stats from IBM: 

"Water is the next oil. The amount of freshwater in the world is finite—there is only so much....We're not going to create more water. But we can help people be proactive and be smarter about how we deal with the water we have." - Carey Hidaka, one of IBM's experts who will be happy to help you manage your water.

Wow...the next oil!

Comments

[كشف تسربات بجدة]

Excellent article!
I follow these problems well.
تسربات

Thanks

[Chris Maxwell-Gaines]

Michael, thanks for analyzing the infographic more closely. I posted it on my Watercache blog when I found it "somewhat hidden" on the IBM website. They do provide a notation of where they got the water drip stat from though, the American Society of Civil Engineers. I too am suspicious of large corporations who want to get their hands on the management of our water. Hopefully their other stats were a little more correct. Oh, I enjoy your veryinformative Twitter stream.

[Jim Harrington]

It amazes me how the cleanest water on earth falls from the sky and instead of all of us harvesting it we let it fall to the ground to become the dirtiest water on earth as storm water run off. Rainwater harvesting was once a standard of life. Saving water saves more energy than any energy conservation options. Rainwater harvesting supplements water supply/reduces pollution/saves energy. Is it me or is this a 'No Brainer'
Jim Harrington
Jim@rainwaterpillow.com