The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Technology relevant to water, climate and hazards and critical infrastructure: what it can do, the constraints it faces and its consequences for people and institutions.
Water · Stage gates
pilot vs gate
Water Nexus · Innovation pipelineInnovation pipeline, in outline: domain structure with placeholder names and illustrative values, not a record.
Innovation at Water Nexus is the evaluation of technology relevant to water: the need it addresses, the evidence behind it, its constraints and its consequences for safety, rights and the environment. Promising work can be built in Nexus Foundry and tested in Nexus Universe; nothing is called proven before test and review, and no product is endorsed.
Fig.How a finding is reviewed before it is published. Design, not a record.
Rivers, lakes and how far each division sits from mapped surface water, shown for the Colorado River Basin as an example geography for this subject.
Which problem does the technology address, and for whom?
What has been demonstrated, under what conditions, and what remains untested?
Cost, skills, infrastructure, data and governance requirements.
Effects on safety, rights, equity and the environment.
| Technology | What it could change | What remains to be shown |
|---|---|---|
| Wide-swath satellite altimetry (for example the SWOT mission) | River and lake levels in ungauged basins | Accuracy on narrow rivers and under vegetation; continuity beyond mission life |
| Machine-learning rainfall-runoff models | Better prediction in ungauged basins by learning across many catchments | Behaviour under unprecedented extremes and changing land use |
| Low-cost water-level and quality sensors | Denser observation for utilities and communities | Calibration drift, maintenance and data stewardship over years |
| Smart metering and leakage analytics | Visibility of non-revenue water and demand | Data protection, utility capacity to act on the data |
| Managed aquifer recharge | Storing wet-season water underground | Site-specific hydrogeology, water quality and long-term monitoring |
Promising methods are tried in Nexus Labs and built in Nexus Foundry; none is presented here as proven.
Promising work can be built in Nexus Foundry and tested under controlled conditions through Nexus Universe. No technology is described as proven before it has been tested and reviewed.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Technology readiness level | A scale from basic principles to proven operation that describes how mature a technology is. |
| Responsible innovation | Anticipating and governing the effects of new technology together with society. |
| Testbed | A controlled setting, from a lab rig to a field site or sandbox, for trying a technology before it meets real conditions of use. |
| Integrated water resources management | A process that coordinates the development and management of water, land and related resources across sectors and levels of government; SDG indicator 6.5.1 tracks how far it is implemented. |
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.