“Fille romaine à la fontaine” 1875 Léon Bonnat
Civilization has historically flourished around rivers and major waterways. Mesopotamia, the so-called cradle of civilization, was situated between the major rivers Tigris and Euphrates; the ancient society of the Egyptians depended entirely upon the Nile. Rome was also founded on the banks of the Italian river Tiber. Large metropolises like Rotterdam, London, Montreal, Paris, New York City, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Tokyo, Chicago, and Hong Kong owe their success in part to their easy accessibility via water and the resultant expansion of trade. Islands with safe water ports, like Singapore, have flourished for the same reason. In places such as North Africa and the Middle East, where water is more scarce, access to clean drinking water was and is a major factor in human development.*
With this perspective, and our own “home waters” situated in the Great Lakes, we are attentive to water management standardization activity administered by International Organization Standardization Technical Committee 224 (ISO TC/224). The scope of the committee is multidimensional; as described in the business plan linked below:
Water-related management standards define a very active space; arguably, as fast-moving a space as electrotechnology. The ISO TC/224 is a fairly well accomplished committee with at least 16 consensus products emerging from a 34 nations led by Association Française de Normalisation (@AFNOR) as the global Secretariat and 34 participating nations. The American Water Works Association is ANSI’s US Technical Advisory Group administrator to the ISO.
We do not advocate the user interest in this standard at the moment but encourage educational institutions with resident expertise — either on the business side or academic side of US educational institutions — to participate in it. You are encouraged to communicate directly with Paul Olson at AWWA, 6666 W. Quincy Avenue, Denver, CO 80235, Phone: (303) 347-6178, Email: [email protected].
The work products of TC 224 (and ISO 147 and ISO TC 282) are also on the standing agendas of our Water, Global and Bucolia colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting, open to everyone.
Issue: [13-163]
Category: Global, Water
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Christine Fischer, Jack Janveja. Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel
