We have built our cities largely assuming that water, when not of drinking water quality and properly contained in pressurized pipes, was mostly a nuisance: something to be avoided on roadways, kept out of basements, or piped to the nearest conveyance that could carry it away as quickly as possible. As a society we are rethinking these assumptions and looking more closely at the choices we make and how the actions we take affect the value of water.
From Boston, Mr. Quigley elucidates the complexity, scale, and hidden challenges in current urban water management as well as shows examples and live demonstrations of disruptive technologies including live feeds from intelligent and forecast integrated rainwater harvesting systems, combined gray water/stormwater systems, green roofs that think on their own, and ambient information systems that tie people to their water environment by integrating information into living spaces.
As Director of Research and Development for Real-Time Services at Geosyntec, Marcus Quigley works on solutions of some of the country’s most challenging urban water infrastructure problems through a variety of innovative approaches including physical environmental computing (i.e., treating the physical world as an extension of the virtual internet).
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
More info: TEDxbeaconstreet
Produced by: TED
Year: 2014
Language: English
