The water conflict prevention app will now predict the water-related crisis one year in advance in the wake of growing tensions across the globe relating to the scarcity of water.
The water scarcity is feared to cause conflicts in countries like India, Iraq, and Mali, according to the developers of the app launched last week. The app makers plan to prevent water-related conflicts by predicting them.
The latest app will serve as a “milestone,” by predicting the dangers before it reaches the nose. According to them, a similar kind of crisis is also feared in Pakistan, Iran, and Nigeria within a year, due to scarcity of water.
Changing environments, increasing population, expanding cities, economic development, and increased agriculture are constantly consuming the limited water resources.
According to a recently published report by the RushHourDaily Foundation reveals that a quarter of the earth is consuming more water resources than nature is reproducing.
The International Organization for Water Resources has collaborated in the making of this new app. The app-led innovation will help the governments and disaster management organizations to alert in advance in case of any natural calamity. It will enable them to prevent the crisis.
The organization says that in the experimentation level, the app has been 86% success rate. It mostly predicted the conflicts with ten casualties or more.
International Alert’s Jessica Hartog has said the app is more important in the contemporary circumstances, where scarcity of water is likely to result in conflicts in the foreseeable future.
She told Thomas Foundation that the app could save human lives. However, there is a need to sit with the politicians and inform them about the statistics, predicting the dangers.
The WPS Global Early Warning uses machine learning to “pinpoint conflict risks on the basis of more than 80 variables going back 20 years”.
These factors include moisture in the air, draught, data received from satellite resources, data related to society, economy, or about population, the density of population. It also takes into account the history of violence in those regions.
Charles Iceland of World’s Resources Institute says that the availability of water is one of the most neglected problems humankind has to face.
He also attributes the invention of this as one of the greatest efforts to establish global peace. He says that it will enable mankind to take appropriate actions before bloodshed on water.
Mali’s Experiment with the Water Conflict Prevention App
The app was used in Mali on an experimental basis, where the scarcity of water was contributing to a row between the farmers and the shepherds.
International Alert’s Hartog says that this data plays a crucial role in convincing the politicians and the policymakers.
He said that they are already discussing with the government and the civil society groups in Mali about the predictable dangers emanating from water scarcity.
In addition, Water and Peace Security had predicted in Iraq about the fears of the possibilities of the clean water in Basra.
It had predicted Basra would be facing a critical situation like the previous year. Around 120000 people in Basra had to go to hospitals due to contaminated water last year.
Related: India’s Water Crisis
