Water is the essential element of sustainable development. Water resources and the multiplicity of services that these make possible are the foundation of poverty reduction, economic growth and environmental sustainability. From food and energy security to human health till the environment, the water contributes to the improvement of social welfare and inclusive growth, with effects on the livelihoods of billions of people.
The paths towards unsustainable development and governance deficiencies have affected the quality and availability of water resources, compromising the ability to generate social and economic benefits. The demand for fresh water is increasing. If the balance between demand and availability of a resource limited will not be restored, the world will have to cope with a dangerous global shortage of water.
Global demand for water is influenced by population growth, urbanization, the policies relating to food and energy security, as well as by macroeconomic processes such as globalization of trade, the change in eating habits and consumption growth. It is estimated that by 2050 the global demand for water will increase by 55%, mainly due to the growth in demand.
In this scenario Fog represents a large, untapped source portable water, especially in arid climates. Numerous plants and animals use textural as well as chemical features on their surfaces to harvest this precious resource.
As one part of the solution to the water crisis, fog harvesting has already been successfully demonstrated in the field in more than 17 countries over event decades.
The fog harvesting capability of plants and animals have been studied extensively, sticky spider webs decorated with tiny water droplets collected from morning fog are a common sight.
This innovative technology is based on the fact that water can be collected from fogs under favorable climatic conditions. Fogs are defined as a mass of water vapor condensed into small water droplets at, or just above, the Earth's surface. The small water droplets present in the fog precipitate when they come in contact with objects. The frequent fogs that occur in the arid coastal areas of Peru and Chile are traditionally known as camanchacas. These fogs have the potential to provide an alternative source of freshwater in this otherwise dry region if harvested through the use of simple and low-cost collection systems known as fog collectors. Present research suggests that fog collectors work best in coastal areas where the water can be harvested as the fog moves inland driven by the wind. However, the technology could also potentially supply water for multiple uses in mountainous areas should the water present in stratocumulus clouds, at altitudes of approximately 400 m to 1200 m, be harvested.
Inspired by such natural phenomena researchers have constructed fog harvesting meshes, the goal is to maximize the efficiency at which the water contents is extracted from the incident moist air stream. Applied to select a mesh surface with optimal topography and wetting characteristics to harvest enhanced water fluxes over a wide range of natural convected fog environments .
According to the UN World Water Development Report 2015 , to the World Water Assessment Programme and to a recent UN water crisis report by the food and Agriculture Organization " fog collection technology appears to be an extremely promising and low-cost water harvesting system for drinking water, crop irrigation, livestock beverage and forest restoration in dry-land mountains.”
The main objective of WaLi project is to investigate processes of Fog Water Harvesting, with particular attention to the technological, economical and social conditions into the exploration of new architectural and landscape devices that could produce new settlements that represent a future answer to the UN main expected scenarios “Water for a sustainable world”.
The project aims to experiment new models for the creation of innovative devices which are capable of becoming opportunities for new life cycles, starting from human activities like agriculture and going into environmental actions like reforestation of dry-lands as consequence of irresponsible human activities.
The objective is to define strategies, operating assumptions, scenarios, study of feasibility for the development of innovative settlements which are able to become pilot projects or “icons” of a new sustainable approach, attractors of sensible stakeholders, and at the same time, to identify the necessary conditions for the activation of the processes of incremental change of the places which, through the practices of sustainable development, allow the creation of innovative sustainable experimental clusters.
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