Data Intelligence for 21st Century Water Management: A Report from the 2015 Aspen-Nicholas Water Forum

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues. The Institute has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It also maintains offices in New York City and has an international network of partners.

 

The Aspen Institute Energy and Environment Program provides nonpartisan leadership and a neutral forum for improving energy and environmental policymaking through values-based dialogue. The Program convenes strategic groups of experts from government, business, academia, and nonprofit organizations in dialogue structured and moderated for discussion, exploration, and consensus building. www.aspeninstitute.org

 

The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University improves environmental policymaking worldwide through objective, fact-based research to confront the climate crisis, clarify the economics of limiting carbon pollution, harness emerging environmental markets, put the value of nature’s benefits on the balance sheet, develop adaptive water management approaches, and identify other strategies to attain community resilience. The Nicholas Institute is part of Duke University and its wider community of world-class scholars. This unique resource allows the Nicholas Institute’s team of economists, scientists, lawyers, and policy experts not only to deliver timely, credible analyses to a wide variety of decision makers, but also to convene these decision makers to reach a shared understanding regarding this century’s most pressing environmental problems. www.nicholasinstitute.duke.edu

The 2015 Aspen-Nicholas Water Forum was the fourth forum in which the Aspen Institute and the Nicholas Institute have partnered. The first, in 2005, on water, sanitation, and hygiene in the developing world, produced A Silent Tsunami, which made a material contribution in advancing priorities in U.S. foreign assistance for basic water services. The report ultimately helped spur passage of the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. In 2011, the two institutions again joined together to host a one-day forum to take stock of progress, documented in A Silent Tsunami Revisited. The success of these endeavors provided the impetus for additional forums focused on water concerns in the United States.