Project Showcase: World Water Day

Hi there, Kumunity! Tomorrow is #worldwaterday, and this year’s theme is Glacier Preservation. Meltwater shifts are causing floods, droughts, and sea level rise. How do we manage meltwater sustainably?

Members of our Kumunity tackle questions like these and they use Kumu to visually communicate their work through systems and stakeholder maps, from Burkina Faso and Azerbaijan, to Venezuela and California’s Central Coast!

Modeling Project Azerbaijan

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This map provides an interactive exploration of Azerbaijan’s agricultural and energy systems, focusing on how water scarcity impacts these interconnected sectors. Agriculture and energy in Azerbaijan are highly vulnerable to climate-related challenges, including droughts, fluctuating water availability, and temperature changes. These disruptions threaten crop yields, energy production, and economic stability. The map illustrates the interdependencies between agriculture and energy and how climate risks intensify water scarcity, highlighting pathways that affect food security, rural livelihoods, and overall resilience.

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Central Coast Water Systems Map

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The Central Coast Water’s group outlines their vision for the future: That all water users in California’s Central Coast farming region are stewarding their collective water resources and equitably addressing multiple needs in support of resilient ecosystems, a thriving economy and healthy communities. This map reflects their understanding of the dynamics and underlying patterns that lead to the system behaviors experienced today. 21 loops endeavor to reflect the experiences of 20 workshop participants, who operate from different vantage points in the system.

Check it out | See also: California Groundwater by Ashley Boren

UK Infrastructure for Resilience Systems Mapping

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This presentation does an incredible job of walking users visually through a UK commissioned resilience study using a systems mapping approach. This study considered the current scenario of national-level decision-making factors and how they impact the level of service that is delivered across the UK’s infrastructure sectors. One especially useful view shows decision-making factors colored by category: policy, regulatory action, markets, service provision, and emergency service provision, among others.

Check it out | Also see this publication

Water Pivot Hypotheses

This is a summary visualization of potential areas of influence to create a pivot in the realm of water pricing, to encourage water consumption and wastewater quality to reflect the value of water resources. It’s cool that different connection colors represent different types of flows: resource flows, influencing mechanisms, and flows of money, while different factors are colored by category: technology, organisation, society, natural system, etc.

Check it out | See also Water System Mapping by user BryonyB!

Ocean Sewage Alliance

Besides understanding larger systems and networks, Kumu has been cleverly used here to show connections between this groups’ objectives and activities!

Check it out | See also: A Framework for Regional Progression by Claire Hirashiki

Drought Risk for Freshwater Ecosystems

This is a conceptual model to understand the impacts of drought events for freshwater ecosystems in Europe.

Check it out | Presentation here. Also see: Edora Inland Water Support, Freshwater Systems Update, and European Drought Observatory for Resilience and Adaptation: Freshwater Ecosystems

Venezuela Systems Map

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A system-of-systems baseline map depicting the current state of essential service systems and their wider context in Venezuela. The dropdowns on the right-hand side are powerful for looking at the data in different ways, a master class in the use of the Kumu’s partial views capabilities!

Stories include:

• Electricity Supply in Venezuela
• Unreliable Power Continuity
• Unreliable Power Quality
• Cascading Effects of Unreliable Power Supply
• Water: Unreliable Water Supply
• PUO: Orinoco Mining Arc Dynamics
• Environmental Degradation and Climate Change
• Shock Map: Cascading Effects of an Extreme Storm / Heavy Rainfall Event

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Reimagining our Wastewater and Environmental Performance

This well-made systems visualization uses labeled loops to help build understanding of wastewater and environmental performance. They also built a solutions map!

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Haiti Water Crisis

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A systems map as well as a deep structure visualization of the water crisis in Haiti with loops and factors such as: sanitation systems, aid/help, cultural imperialism, income generation, employment, and more.

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Water System in Burkina Faso

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This simple but powerful visualization uses coloring and connections to help understand the stakeholders in Burkina Faso’s water system.

AMR Water Pathways

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We love when biologists find Kumu useful! This is an aquatic systems map for the presence, emission and dissemination of antimicrobial resistant bacteria (ARB) and antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment from a Canadian context.

Check it out | See also Enhancing Our Understanding of the Role of the Environment in the Spread and Development of Antimicrobial Resistance

You can see all these projects about water systems and more at Kumu Projects in the Wild! Search for “water” in the “Themes” dropdown.

If you’d like to submit your own project to be showcased, please do so here!