Overcoming Distance by Raising Elevation of Water AT the Source

Once a few humans figured out that gravity would move water, available at higher elevations to lower elevations (see post dated November 19, 2011), other humans began looking at ways to replace pack animals and human water-carriers who were transporting water from lower elevations to higher elevations.In other words, some humans began to address the problem of raising water to levels that would allow gravity to supply water to points far away from a water source. And invent they did.


Shaduf (~ 2000 B.C.)

Source - waterhisrory.org

The Shaduf was probably invented to replace the slow and laborious process of using slaves and pack animals to transport water to higher elevations.
The Shaduf employed the lever principle to raise water from a river or lake bed onto a higher landscape i.e. to feed an irrigation trench. 
A Shaduf could raise water a maximum of 7-8 feet.
The historical record shows Shaduf use in Mesopotamia and widespread use in Egypt.
The Shaduf came into existence about 2000 B.C.
A Shaduf requires human power and is limited by the size of its bucket but could be deployed in very large numbers to raise large quantities of water. There is extensive evidence of the Shaduf being mainly powered by slaves and convicts.
Archimedes Screw (~250 B.C.)

Source - school-for-champions.com

Attributed to be an invention by Archimedes, water was raised to higher elevations by turning the handle.
The compact design allowed this device to empty holds of ships, to draw away water from mines, keep areas free of water and, of course, draw water for irrigation and drinking purposes.
The Noria  or Water wheel (~250 B.C.)

Source - eo.wikipedia.org

A Noria is a wheel that raises water, a bucket at a time, to an elevation that is at most equal to the diameter of the wheel.
The buckets are each attached along the length of the wheel rim. 
To operate, the wheel is placed in a body of water with the bottom-most bucket submerged in the water body.
As the wheel turns, the lower-most bucket slips under water, is filled with water, rises up to the top of the wheel where it is emptied of water which flows into a channel that leads to a reservoir. Through this process, water in the  water body is raised to a height nearly equal to the diameter of the wheel.
Three different types of Noria exist depending upon how the wheel is turned. 
One design uses human or animal power, harnessed to the wheel, to turn the wheel.
In windy places, where the wind is especially strong, the Noria is modified such that the wind turns the wheel - this same rudimentary design is assumed to be replicated in a windmill designed for milling wheat and corn.
In streams where the water current is especially strong, the current pushes against appendages attached to the Noria that turn the wheel.
The city of Hama in Syria, has the largest known Noria (20 meters in diameter) in the world.
Elaborate Combinations (~90 A. D.)

Source - wikipedia.org

Recent excavations in mines in Spain and South Wales in the 1930s have revealed the existence of layers of waterwheels to excavate water from mines.

Gravity: Nature's Tool for Moving Water Over Long Distances

Water flows naturally over long distances if a single condition exists: The elevation at the beginning location is higher than the elevation at the ending location. The force of Gravity naturally moves water from higher to lower elevations.


Human Settlements Around Nature's Rivers

The River Nile
Source - abbaymedia.com

Running downhill, rivers deliver water to communities all along its length. 
The longest river, The Nile, is over 6,600 km long 
Traversing this distance, the Nile sustains communities of life in ten countries, namely, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.
The Nile originates at an elevation of 2,700 m (above sea level) and ends in the Mediterranean sea after its 6,600 Km journey.
The Nile and the other rivers contain an estimated 0.006% of all the freshwater on Earth. These 509 cubic miles of freshwater are regularly replenished by the hydrological cycle.


Human Settlements Away From Rivers and Lakes
Gravity is the first natural force that humanity learned to harness to bring water from a river or a lake to a human settlement.
Surface Structures
The first known successes by humanity to use gravity for irrigation were in four regions of the world: In Egypt around the Nile river, in Mesopotamia around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in India around the Indus and Ganges Rivers and in China around the Huang He (Yellow) river.
The larger channels feed water into the smaller and smaller channels using the force of gravity. The channel beds have to be sloped correctly for gravity-fed water to move from channel to channel. 
This method of irrigation, known as furrowed irrigation, is still widely used in the world. It originated as early as 5000 BC.
Underground Piping

Source - en.wikipedia.org

The puquios in Peru, use gravity to channel surface water into pipes dug out under ground by humans, that end at a settlement. Peru and the many other human communities in the Andes Mountains, used this method extensively to channel water into pipes.
Arranging a number of puquios to feed into a single pipe is said to have provided enough freshwater for a community of over a hundred people.

Speed of Remedy Deployment is Key to Reducing Water Scarcity

Any global effort to reduce the ranks of people (and other living things and nature's ecosystems) experiencing water scarcity and shortages must recognize two crucial facts:

1. As time progresses, the water-deprived group will continue to grow by the addition of more people, especially in the developing parts of the world.
2. To get a net reduction in the number of water-deprived people, any remedy must, therefore, be deployed at a rate much larger than the rate of addition to the water-deprived ranks.

Addition to the Water-Deprived Ranks

Source - wikipedia.org

The rate of addition to human population has generally declined over the past 30 years. 
At its peak, 88 million people were added in 1989. The recent lowest addition was 73.9 million people added in 2003. In 2009, however, the human population added 75.3 million people. The annual addition is projected to drop to 43 million people in 2050.


Current Estimates of the Water-Deprived

Source - collections.europarchive.org

Water scarcity was quantified as follows, in 2004, by UNICEF and the World Heath Organization:

• About 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water - This is more than 1 out of every 6 people on Earth
• About 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation - This is 2 out of every 6 people on Earth

It is, thus, an understatement to say that we have at least 2 billion people today whose thirst for safe drinking water still needs to be quenched.


Water Scarcity Elimination Target
Thus, to maintain the water-deprived population at current levels requires deploying water supply-increasing remedies that impact around 100 million people. Such a number might also reduce by just a very tiny bit, the size of the 2 billion water-deprived population.
A significant dent in the 2 billion water-deprived population will be a reduction in the population by 100 million per year. Thus, thus, requires us to provide safe drinking water to at least 200 million people per year i.e. 100 million in addition to the  maintenance number of 100 million.


Providing Safe Water to 200 Million
The goal of providing water to 200 million people in one year is equivalent to providing safe water to:
- nearly 548,000 people/day or
- nearly 22,831 people/hour, or
- nearly 381 people/minute, or
- nearly 6 people/second


Challenge of the MASSIVE SCALE of Water Scarcity
The 200 million goal, at first look, appears impossible to meet or imagine. But there may be clues in how other industries have reached numbers that come close to those required to provide safe water to 200 million more people every year.
The Lesson from the Telephone Industry - Joseph Schumpeter's concept of 'gales of creative destruction' applied to water scarcity implies that the existing water-industry complex has very little incentive to innovate and innovation can only come from outside - like it did in the telephone industry, where mobile phones have transformed the traditional telephone industry by being able to supply a "product" that requires minimal customization in the local environment.


Necessary Characteristics of the Remedy for Water Scarcity

1. What constitutes the product that requires insignificant local customization and increases supply of safe freshwater to people anywhere on Earth? The answer to this question incorporates humanity's need for speed in supplying safe drinking water to those that are deprived of this life resource today.
2. Must address the daunting variety of water problems that are found all over the globe, and
3. Must work anywhere on Earth

The second and third characteristics were identified in the post dated October 1, 2011, titled "Water Needs Thinking on a Massive Scale"

Freshwater Management's Achilles' Heel

Our expectations of what the future will be like, of literally everything related to water, is based upon what we know to be true today and our knowledge of how things have evolved or changed in the past. Unfortunately, we now live in a time where we cannot predict the future with any reasonable level of confidence.


Achilles' Heel

Source - wikipedia.org

In Greek mythology, Achilles gained an impervious armor all over his body - except on his left heel - when his mother dipped him into the river Styx.
Achilles left heel did not get the body armor because his mother held his body from this heel while she dipped him into the river Styx. 
With his body armor, Achilles became virtually invincible and a fearsome warrior.
Achilles' successes continued until an opponent's arrow struck him in his unprotected heel - Achilles' left heel was his only weak spot.




The Assumption of Stationarity - Freshwater Management's Achilles' Heel

Source - Wikipedia.org

The concept of Stationarity implies that a system always fluctuates within a reasonably narrow envelope which can be created using historical facts - facts that are usually numerical measure-ments.
Non-stationarity implies the opposite i.e. extreme difficulty in the creation of an envelope because of extreme variability that shows no clear pattern or a pattern that never repeats because it continues to change.


Why Non-Stationarity Now?
Human actions have always impacted Stationarity. For freshwater management in the late twentieth-century, it was easy to add-in the existence and impact of variability induced by human action.
Today, however, the patterns of change have become so complex that there exists no model on variability - especially one that reconciles and is supported by instrumented measurements.
The uncertainties around predictions today are extremely large primarily due to global warming and the resulting climate changes. We cannot model the effects of global warming and the resulting increases in rainfall (precipitation) with a level of confidence that makes the model believable for the present and usable for predicting the future.


Freshwater Planning WITHOUT benefit of Stationarity
The Achilles' heel of freshwater predictions today is the inability of water managers to predict with any real confidence how water-resources will behave differently from their historical behaviour i.e.

• The risk of water shortages has increased - Rainfall will come, but where, when and in what amounts cannot be predicted
• Risks of floods has also increased - The location and intensity of flooding cannot be foretold

 The bottom line: Extreme uncertainty in predicting freshwater supply


What's Our Best Course of Action Now?
In this Anthropocenic Era, humanity must do what it has always done i.e. imagine an acceptable future and work hard to make it a reality. Mankind must primarily focus on developing approaches that supply freshwater on demand.

Overcoming Distance is Humanity's Fundamental Freshwater Challenge

Transportation of water to where people have chosen to live or forcing people to live in close proximity to freshwater supplies are two solutions that mankind has practiced ever since the beginning of civilization. This "transportation" issue is still the heart of our current and future freshwater crises.


Places with Meager Freshwater Supplies
The story and images of women spending their day carting water from sources far, far away from where they live, are well known and publicized as a scourge on the already poor. 

Source - newstimeafrica.com

Source - workworthdoing.com

Innovators have developed devices, like the rolling container that makes water transportation a less physical activity, but does not address the basic issue - the water is far away from where the people who need it are.

Ancient Roman Aqueduct
Source - think2020.tripod.com

In the richer parts of the world the solution to this basic issue is no different, except in scale and institutionalization - the formation of an organization which exists for the sole purpose of supplying needed freshwater.

Source - planetforward.org

Source - spannertech.com

Without such costly and massive creations, most of the population centers in the developed world would also be susceptible to water shortages and supply disruptions.
Covering the distance problem is still the most basic issue behind the supply of freshwater.
Places with Abundant Freshwater Supply
Humanity's Freshwater crisis would disappear in an instant if people lived in locations where there currently exists an abundant natural supply of freshwater and where future freshwater supplies were assured.

Source - worldatlas.com

Unfortunately, however, the two locations with the most freshwater resources (the areas around the North and South Poles) are too inhospitable for long human existence.


And there are no other locations that have necessary freshwater supplies for the existing and future mega-cities that are projected to house nearly 50% of the world's population.


The Distance Eliminating Solutions
The only "local" bodies of freshwater, that can eliminate or, at least, drastically shorten the distance, are the bodies of water located in the "local" air (the atmosphere) and under the ground over which people live. The reality that local underground supplies are already non-existent or under severe stress of becoming extinct, leaves only the option of finding ways to harvest water from the local atmosphere.