Paper Reading #4: Cross Currents: Water Scarcity and Sustainable CHI

Comments:
Vince Kocks
Stuart Jones

Reference Information:
Title: Cross Currents: Water Scarcity and Sustainable CHI
Authors:  Tad Hirsch, Ken Anderson
Presentation Venue: CHI 2010 April 10-15, 2010 Atlanta, Georgia, USA
 
Summary:

This article is about a study in central New Mexico to find ways that new technologies, particularly personal water consumption devices, could assist in water conservation.  The study was done around three large cities, Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, and Sante Fe. This area provides a wide range of water use such as cities, agriculture, a semi-conductor plant, and Native American pueblos.

Interviews were conducted and showed that most people were very familiar with water conservation and recognized it as a priority. People expressed the purpose to their conservation in terms of responsibility and an ethical obligation.

There are several problems with New Mexico's water system. This was shown in the interviews that were conducted. Surface water is transferred based on "rights" and ground water is unregulated. The lack of regulation for groundwater causes over drafting which causes wells to run dry or can lead to aquifer collapse. Some other problems are extreme prices for water rights discourage farming, and the systems leaves room for cheaters. This also leads to mistrust when it comes to this subject.

This shows some things that can be considered in the CHI community. Sustainability is not a simple issue of just using less water, but is an entire system consumption.

Before personal consumption monitoring can be designed a definition of "consumption" must be recognized.  Is it enough to just keep track of the number of gallons that flow from a point? Or would it be better to account for the rate and means through which water is returned to it's source?

Even after how the system will keep track of water consumption, policy and planning must be thought of for the state. There are five distinct challenges associated with water sustainability planning and they are:

• Understanding interactions between human use and hydrologic cycles is an ongoing challenge
• Modeling and simulation technologies are opaque
• Policy implications are indeterminate
• Public participlation remains elusive
• There is a need for greater enforcement, transparency, and benchmarking

Because of this study, designers are cautioned to not think of conservation as an intrinsic good, but rather to see that consumption activities are shaped by a variety of concerns. Sustainability is not a "one-size-gits-all" case, it may be different for each region. Environmental Resource decisions by individual actors and policy makers turn on information, communication, and deliberation - which makes this issue familiar to the CHI community.

Discussion:

This paper is discussing a very important issue, water scarcity. I think the author's decision to interview all of the different communities who use the water differently was very smart because it seems like it would make a water consumption system easier to design.

Based on the different things people care about and observe would lead to a system that works better for everyone and one that can trust. I know you can't please everybody so that's why I think they didn't talk about a specific design idea. They laid the foundation for further research to be conducted in this area.

However, they did show with their own research that one individual region shouldn't necessarily use the same conservation methods as another area. I thought this was a good idea because it included more factors rather than just "just use less water" to find a strong and stable fix to the problem.