On April 27, 2012 WSSS held its third annual symposium, The Glass Half Full: Valuing Water in the 21st Century. This year's event was organized by the Tufts University Water: Systems, Science, and Society program in collaboration with the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The Third Annual Newsletter of the Tufts interdisciplinary graduate education and research program in Water: Systems, Science and Society (WSSS) features the research, activities, and events from 2011-2012.

WSSS Research Fellowship awarded to eight Tufts University graduate students.
See the 2012-2013 WSSS Fellows.

2012 WSSS Practicums work in the Aberjona River, Massachusetts and Aida Camp, Bethlehem. Learn more about the 2012 WSSS Practicums.

WSSS Research in India

"Two Tufts University civil engineering graduate students, Negin and Andrea, collaborated with the Christian Medical College in the Vellore District of Tamil Nadu, India to collect data on environmental indicators of diarrheal diseases. GIS and statistical methods are now being used to determine which indicators are important. This movie describes their research experience at the Christian Medical College in India."

Richard Vogel: A Conversation

"A professor of civil and environmental engineering, Richard M. Vogel has been working at Tufts University since 1984. And while his primary expertise is in the areas of water resource engineering and hydrology -- he's also the director of his school's interdisciplinary program in water systems and science -- Vogel spends a fair amount of time thinking about and calculating the likelihood of earthquakes, landslides, bird extinctions, and even near-Earth asteroid collisions."

"Here, Vogel discusses what it is that people don't understand about interdisciplinary education and research; how the idea that the environment matters as much as human needs, which was first advanced in South Africa, is having enormous repercussions in the water world; and why urbanization as a trend is having a much greater negative impact on our limited water resources than climate change."

Is Clean Water the New Oil?

"Bhaskar Chakravorti: Access to the sources of water yields immense economic and political power. I think it is not an understatement to say that the availability of clean water is at the intersection of global business demographics, geopolitics, technology trends. It is essential to survival. Worldwide demand for it is growing, many sources of water are drying up and there isn’t a clear strategy for how manage the supply. Are we getting to the point where clean water is the new oil? "

"Richard Vogel: It’s a compelling question, because there are more similarities than there are differences. There are differences, but the similarities are profound, and they predominate."

Senior Associate Dean Bhaskar Chakravorti interviews Professor Richard Vogel, Chair of WSSS, on the "water gap".

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From the Atlantic, November 24, 2011

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From the MIB Ten Questions series, October 2011