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5 October 2023
The Belgian Institute for Sustainable IT is pleased to present you a webinar on the concept of Water Footprint as an indicator of the water use in IT, with prof. Alain Dassargues from University of Liège.
- 📆 Date & time : Thursday 5 October 2023, from 11.00 to 12.15
- 📍 Where : online (Teams)
- 📝 Registration : https://forms.office.com/e/YfgGez5viN
- On the intervention :
Water is utilised in every aspect of life, from producing the food we eat to the clothes we wear. Everything requires water in some way, shape, or form, and the manufaturing & utilisation of our IT devices are no exception to this. To give an example; the production of a smartphone requires approximately 12 075L, which is roughly equivalent to 300 showers ! (Guillot, M. et al., 2022)
The total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed by an individual, community, or a business is referred to as Water Footprint. This indicator enables us to determine the magnitude of the impact generated by human activity on our available freswhater resources.
But what exactly does this volume of freshwater represent? How much of this volume of water is lost from its original source and how much is being returned to its source through the water cycle? What is the difference between water consumption, use, and withdrawal ? And what about water pollution?
In this webinar, prof. Alain Dassargues will discuss the concept of Water Footprint as an indicator facing the complexity of the water cycle. His presentation will cover the following topics:
- Water resources (global pictures, rivers and aquifers, quantity and quality issues)
- Terminology (used, consumed, produced, withdrawn, blue, green, and gray waters)
- Summary of Water Footprint and water LCA approaches
- Notion of local water balance
- Examples with detailed unpacked approaches to figures and indexes
- Messages to take home
- Prof. Alain Dassargues
Alain Dassargues is a professor at the University of Liège in the Urban & Environmental Engineering research unit. He was also a part-time professor at the KULeuven from 1995 until 2012. Geological Engineer, he began his career working for Tractebel Engineering on dam sites in Morocco and Algeria, before completing his PhD in hydrogeology (groundwater).
He has participated in and coordinated numerous international, national, and regional projects aimed at characterising, managing and protecting groundwater in relation to land use planning. He is the author of over 135 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and 4 books. He was the President of the 'Belgian Chapter' of the International Association of hydrogeologists from 2012 to 2016.
Source cited:
Guilliot , M., Lemaire, R. & Revereault, S., 2022. Les impacts du numérique . In: Green IT. France: Editions ENI, pp. 23-57.