Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource Author: David Sedlak | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HWWRKVG | Format: PDF
Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource Description
Turn on the faucet, and water pours out. Pull out the drain plug, and the dirty water disappears. Most of us give little thought to the hidden systems that bring us water and take it away when we’re done with it. But these underappreciated marvels of engineering face an array of challenges that cannot be solved without a fundamental change to our relationship with water, David Sedlak explains in this enlightening book. To make informed decisions about the future, we need to understand the three revolutions in urban water systems that have occurred over the past 2,500 years and the technologies that will remake the system.
The author starts by describing Water 1.0, the early Roman aqueducts, fountains, and sewers that made dense urban living feasible. He then details the development of drinking water and sewage treatment systems—the second and third revolutions in urban water. He offers an insider’s look at current systems that rely on reservoirs, underground pipe networks, treatment plants, and storm sewers to provide water that is safe to drink, before addressing how these water systems will have to be reinvented. For everyone who cares about reliable, clean, abundant water, this book is essential reading.
- File Size: 1780 KB
- Print Length: 353 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 030017649X
- Publisher: Yale University Press (January 28, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HWWRKVG
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,373 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Economics > Urban & Regional - #6
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Photography > Architecture > Urban & Land Use Planning - #6
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Nature & Ecology > Natural Resources
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Economics > Urban & Regional - #6
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Arts & Photography > Architecture > Urban & Land Use Planning - #6
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Nature & Ecology > Natural Resources
With drought in the news all over the country, this is a very important book and quite readable. The book looks at the history of drinking water beginning with ancient Rome, its chemistry, the story of how it is treated and delivered to our homes, and the challenges and changes that will be required to accommodate a growing world population.
The book is written in a lively and accessible style with lots of humor, fascinating anecdotes and personalities, and filled with counterintuitive observations, such as the fact that most of our drinking water in the future will come from sewage. (Some of it already is, but don't tell the residents of Houston that).
There are a number of books published about water. But most of them deal with the subject from a geo-political or world environmental perspective. This book is different. It's written by a hydrological engineer and explains the practical steps we need to take to avoid dying of thirst.
By Prufrock
If you are looking for a dry, academic treatise on why humans have corrupted the earth, keep looking.
"Water 4.0" is a delightful, fascinating and ultimately very balanced treatment of humans and water: past, present, and future.
David Sedlak has won many awards and recognition for his innovative and high quality teaching at Berkeley, and it shows through in the book. You will probably put the book down and be amazed at how much you have learned about water and what an easy read it was. The author has produced a very readable tour of water and its importance to human civilization. Starting with the early efforts to channel fresh water to the present and an open view the future, the importance of water is delivered in a fascinating tour of Roman aqueducts, French sewers, Victorian battles for health, through modern systems for delivering water and removing wastes.
Ultimately, the reader is given a great primer on water and its importance to life and society, and in the end, positioned to consider how human society will continue to grow given the challenges of obtaining and providing clean water while removing wastes in sustainable ways. I think that the author has succeed in his goal of calling our attention to the importance of water to all of us, and how big those challenges are for both low resource and high resource societies.
More at his website: [...]
By RabiysRhyme
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