Water Safety, Security and Sustainability : Threat Detection and Mitigation

This book focuses on threats, especially contaminants, to drinking water and the supply system, especially in municipalities but also in industrial and even residential settings. The safety, security, and suitability landscape can be described as dynamic and complex stemming from necessity and hence culpability due to the emerging threats and risks, vis-a-vis globalization resulting in new forms of contaminants being used due to new technologies. The book provides knowledge and guidance for engineers, scientists, designers, researchers, and students who are involved in water, sustainability, and study of security issues. This book starts out with basics of water usage, current statistics, and an overview ofwater resources. The book then introduces different scenarios of safety and security and areas that researchers need to focus. Following that, the book presents different types of contaminants – inadvertent, intentional, or incidental. The next section presents different methodologies of contamination sensing/detection and remediation strategies as per guidance and standards set globally. The book then concludes with selected chapters on water management, including critical infrastructure that is critical to maintaining safe water supplies to cities and municipalities. Each chapter includes descriptive information for professionals in their respective fields. The breadth of chapters offers insights into how science (physical, natural, and social) and technology can support new developments to manage the complexity resident within the evolving threat and risk landscape.

Professor Dr. Ashok Vaseashta is a senior academic leader, currently serving as Vice Provost of Research, Professor of Physics, and Senior Strategic Advisor providing leadership to promote and advance research initiatives and priorities. Earlier, he served as Director of Research at the Institute for Advanced Sciences Convergence (IASC) and International Clean Water Institute (ICWI) for NUARI, Professor of Physics and Physical Sciences, and Director of Research at the Nanomaterials Processing and Characterization Laboratories, and Graduate Program in Physical Sciences at Marshall University. His research interests focus on safety and security, viz. nanotechnology, unconventional warfare, sensors and sensors network, critical infrastructure analysis, technology foresight, scenario planning and alternative analysis, counter-terrorism, complex socio-technical system analysis, water contamination detection, remediation and monitoring, modeling and simulation, systems thinking, and knowledge management.

Dr. Vaseashta has a B.Sc., M.Sc., and M.Tech. in Physics and a Ph.D. from the Virginia Tech, VA. He has edited several books for Springer Publishing book series and serves on editorial board for several journals. He is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and facilitator and has held workshops in Europe, North America, and Asia. He has published extensively in the domains of nanotechnology and physical and cybersecurity.

He served on a rotation as a William C. Foster fellow to the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the U.S. Department of State working with the Office of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism and Foreign Consequence Management program. He also served as a Franklin Fellow and strategic S&T advisor in the office of Verification and Transparency Technologies/Arms Verification and Control at the U.S. Department of State. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society (FAPS), Institute of Nanotechnology (FIoN), and the New York Academy of Sciences (FNYAS). He was awarded a Gold Medal by the State Engineering University of Armenia for his contribution to nanotechnology.