Water Security, Management, and Energy Nexus

«L’eau c’est la vie ». This simple proverb says everything about our dependence on water. In November 2024, Paris hosted the inaugural conference on Sustainable Water Management and Resource Adaptation (SWMRA). Participants from around the world converged to explore one shared conviction: that protecting water is inseparable from protecting life itself. Water forms the living nexus between climate, society, and ecosystems, making its wise stewardship the cornerstone of climate-change resilience. The contributions gathered in this volume put the spotlight on the most promising strategies for securing both surface and groundwater, improving quality and balancing the needs of cities, farms and industries. Chapters range from advanced monitoring and modelling tools to governance frameworks and nature-based solutions that reinforce water security. Experimental researchers also featured emergent sustainable materials for water and wastewater treatment—many derived from repurposed agro-wastes. While these innovations hold great promise, authors remain alert to possible ecotoxicological side-effects and call for rigorous assessment to ensure that today’s solutions do not become tomorrow’s problems. By blending scientific insight, technological innovation and policy perspectives, this book offers a holistic roadmap for anyone committed to safeguarding water—academics, practitioners, decision-makers and students alike. Water sustains life; our collective ingenuity must now sustain water.

Juhana Jaafar is the lecturer of Gas Engineering Department, Faculty of Petroleum and Renewable Energy Engineering. Her professional expertise covers membrane material development for energy application and water and wastewater treatment. She is also extensively continuing to improve the membrane fuel cell technology by identifying product performance and commercialization barriers, and develop strategies to overcome them. Besides continuing to improve product qualities, she is also extensively introducing and promoting membrane technology for fuel cell applications by participating in the product exhibition competition and patent. She believed that the membrane fuel cell can be commercialized by educating people on this clean energy benefits to the mankind and environment.

Silvia Serranti is Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials & Environment (DICMA), Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Rome “La Sapienza”. She is a PhD geologist and she has been working for 15 years at the Raw Materials Unit of DICMA.
Research activity is mainly focused to primary and secondary raw material characterization and valorization in order to improve the industrial process performances and the product quality control and to develop innovative on-line sorting strategies, based on different sensing techniques.
The characterization of primary and secondary raw materials is carried out by different classical and advanced analytical methods: laser diffraction, spectroscopic techniques, such as Raman, FT-IR and hyperspectral imaging, micro-tomographic techniques, optical and electronic microscopy (SEM), classical chemical analyses (ICP, XRF), digital image processing (classical and hyperspectral). Investigated materials include: bottom ash from municipal solid waste incinerators, fluff from automotive shredder residues, construction & demolition waste, tyres, glass cullet, plastics from complex post-consumer waste, compost, biomasses, manure, e-waste. Also solid particles coming from the food industries are taken into account (dried fruits, cereals, ham, etc.), as well as materials from cultural heritage.
She is author of more than 100 scientific papers and she was, and currently is, involved in 11 different EU Research Projects. She is referee for several scientific journals