Mass. Water Resources Research Center Conference Keynote
Thursday, April 8
3:30 pm, Campus Center Auditorium
Smarter Water Management:
Whether Too Much or not Enough, the World Needs a Smarter Way to Think about Water
Dr. Cameron Brooks - Director, Solutions and Business Development, Big Green Innovations
Every time we interact with water, we change its direction, chemistry, usefulness or availability. Because of this daunting complexity, water is poorly understood and often mismanaged. For example, global agriculture wastes an estimated 60% of the 2,500 trillion liters it uses each year. Municipalities lose as much as 50% of their water supply through leaky infrastructure. And there are nearly 53,000 different water agencies in the United States alone, each managing a short stretch of river or a handful of reservoirs. There is no coordination of these agencies, despite the fact that they are all managing a shared resource. There is inadequate sharing of data to achieve a holistic view of the entire watershed or water ecosystem, and of the impact of human activity upon it.
But with innovation comes inspiration. With advances in technology—sophisticated sensor networks, smart meters, information management systems, deep computing and analytics—we can be smarter about how we manage our nation's water systems. We can monitor, measure and analyze entire water ecosystems, from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes and enterprises. We can give all the people, organizations, businesses, and communities dependent on a continuing supply of freshwater—that is, all of us—a single, reliable, up-to-the-minute and actionable view of water use, and accurate information to enable balancing that use with the needs of the environment. Through a combination of information technologies and tools, global water management can be transformed, indeed reborn.
Dr. Brooks will highlight some of the global issues associated with water stress and show examples of how critical water management challenges can be addressed through better use of information technologies.
Dr. Cameron Brooks is the Director of Solutions and Business Development for the Big Green Innovations Group of IBM in Somers, NY. This is a cross-brand group within IBM focused on incubating and growing a portfolio of environmentally-focused initiatives. Since 2008, one of the major objectives of this group has been to grow an Advanced Water Management business for IBM. Cameron is leading a worldwide team of technical experts and business development executives who are leveraging IBM’s information management, advanced analytics and technology services capabilities to develop water management solutions for government, utility and enterprise customers.
In his prior role, Cameron was Program Director for the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. He has been employed at IBM for 13 years, and has successfully led several initiatives involved in bringing innovative new technologies to market. Cameron has also held several technical roles in the Systems & Technology Group of IBM, having started his career in Burlington, Vermont as a Development Engineer in the Microelectronics Division. Cameron holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He also holds an MBA degree from the New York University Stern School of Business.
Cameron has been issued 6 U.S. patents and has authored over 20 technical papers. He is married, a father to two girls, and lives in Westchester County, NY.