Dive Brief:

• Aspen Institute, along with the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University and Redstone Strategy Group, released a report with findings and guidance on how to use water data to improve sustainable use of the resource.  
• The report, "Internet of Water: Sharing and Integrating Water Data for Sustainability," is described as a "vision for a national policy framework that addresses institutional barriers to scaling the integration of water data and information to support sustainable water management."
• The recommendations to create an "Internet of Water" include to enable open water data, integrate existing public water data and connect regional data sharing communities.

Dive Insight:

Aspen Institute, the Nicholas Institute and Redstone gathered experts, researchers and stakeholders for talks throughout much of 2016 into 2017 to figure out better water infrastructure and what’s holding back the current system. Among the actions the report recommends is to articulate a vision of sustainable water resource management, develop tools opening existing, public water data for both producers and users and creating or identifying an organization that can enable a system of data.

‎"In the same way that integrating public road data made Google Maps possible, and all other kinds of unforeseen new opportunities, integrating public water data is necessary to really see our nation's water for the first time, and really open up water to new opportunities," said Martin Doyle, director of the water policy program at the Nicholas Institute.

Making public water data open and available to interested parties is the most necessary step in using water data for sustainability, according to the report. The open data could be found instead of created with volumes of public data already in existence, collected by public agencies or reported for regulatory purposes.