Date: 29/12/2022

Relevance: GS-3: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation.

Key Phrases: Industrial Planning And Management Practices, Karnataka Water Policy 2022, Geospatial Information Systems, India-WRIS, Digital Twin.

Why In News?

• Recent studies have indicated that 8 -10 percent of the water sector caters to the industrial economy, with this demand increasing at about 2 percent per annum.
• With growing water scarcity and climate change, it is imperative to sustainably integrate water into overall industrial planning and management practices.

Key Highlights:

• Over the last few decades, schemes such as the Make in India, Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme, and Security and Growth for all in the Region (SAGAR) have encouraged in-house manufacturing, infrastructure growth and consequential growth in industrial demand for water resources.
• Currently, industrial policies and plans prioritise budget and space allocation making land as the dominant natural resource in large-scale industrial planning.
• Land availability and acquisition being a deciding factor, shape industrial areas’ location across the country and the use of natural resources, particularly water, usually occurs after land allocation, resulting in inefficient water resource planning.

Sources of Water Supply For Indian Industries:

• Currently, water supply to industrial areas comes from two main sources.
  • Commercial per industrial water connection offered by the state government industries department
  • The industries are also permitted to lift water, at their expenditure, from local reservoirs/canals and supplement this with water from private borewells and water tankers.

Issues With India’s Industrial Water Management:

• Groundwater is an important source of water for industries. However, it remains highly unaccounted and unregulated.
• Industries require permits for groundwater extraction, and while some statutes limit levels of extraction, enforcement is lacking.
• Industries self-report the quantity used by them but it is not regulated or audited as strictly as state-provided piped water leading to unregulated water usage.

Issue of Poor Governance Structure:

• The combination of ineffective governance and unregulated industrial use severely affects the local (ground) water levels, negatively impacting the local environment, communities and even the future of these industries.
• This is particularly the case around drought-prone regions that depend on groundwater supply.
• Gaps in the way water is measured add to the poor governance structure.

Karnataka Water Policy 2022:

• The Karnataka Industrial and Development Board (KIADB) has attempted to map water availability while planning industrial areas. This is in addition to creating a dynamic water resource mapping initiative that includes industrial groundwater use.
• The new Karnataka Water Policy 2022 also addresses unregulated commercial groundwater exploitation and aims to create an integrated water management system.

Reasons Behind Unregulated Water Usage:

• Fundamental reason for this recurring outcome of industrialisation is
  • lack of foundational planning and an increased dependence on industrial implementation.
  • Severe dearth of reliable water (use) data.

Addressing The Gap Using Geospatial Technology:

• Geospatial technology, a recent pivot in the use of technology has intuitive applications in industrial water management by mapping and maintaining databases for groundwater levels, use and consumers.
• Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) have been prominent in academic research on ‘water management’.
• However, the application of this technology in regulation and application has been sparse.

India-WRIS (Water Resources Information System):

• India’s civil space organisation, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has, along with the Ministry of Water Resources, created the India-WRIS platform which helps users search, access, visualise, understand, and analyse comprehensive and contextual water resources data for assessment, monitoring, planning, development, and Integrated Water Resources Management.
• It monitors 434 reservoirs in India.

Issues with the platform:

• Even as a ‘Single Window Solution’, it ignores the utility of reservoirs, surface water, or groundwater in the industrial sector, focusing on urban and agricultural utility.
• This gap in the demarcation of water use, despite the industry being such a large sector on the demand side of the supply chain, results in a gap in regulatory practices and application.

Creation of Digital Twin For Simulation Of Real-Life Situations And Analysis Of Impact:

• The contribution of geospatial technology can also include creating a digital twin which is a virtual replica of the physical world, its dynamics, and processes, which allow us to simulate real-life situations and analyse their impact.
• Representing entities in the physical world to their respective virtual models’ databases leads to aligned outcomes.
• It allows for ease of doing business in dealing with physical systems like pipes, pumps, valves, and tanks.
• It also includes historical data sets such as weather records and real-time dynamic interactions.

Challenges of Technology Utilisation In Policy And Planning:

• Startup costs of technology adoption:
  • Although including technology in policy and planning is an effective method, the startup costs to these acts as demotivators.
  • Investing in sophisticated technology at the state level can be expensive, requiring national budget allocation and alignment of all states for fair and equitable advancement.
  • State investment in geospatial technology is only enough with national support to ensure institutional integration that allows all concerned departments to access and add to the repository of information.
• Lack of skilled labour:
• Training personnel to collect and analysing data using modern technology is often an unseen human resource expenditure, the lack of which causes the failure of systematic absorption of technology.
• Gaps in governance structures:
  • Apart from limited funding and skilled labour, gaps in governance structures make it challenging to have an integrated database and management system.

Way Forward:

• Satellites and technology like digital twins aside, various methodologies commonly used in theoretical geospatial applications can aid in zonation, water mapping and management.
• Industrial water mapping regulations and guidelines can include methods like
  • Shannon’s entropy model that measures a one-on-one relationship between the quantity of entropy of a system and the degree of disorder)
  • Boolean modelling involving the logical combination of binary maps resulting from the application of conditional operators
• These can be implemented to effectively increase the quality of water mapping and reduce exploitation of water resources.

Conclusion:

• While the given challenges are important to consider, the costs should not outweigh the requirement for investing in a robust water management system because it is an urgent requirement, particularly for states investing heavily in economic corridors to guarantee sustainability.
• Groundwater management is a critical element in watershed protection. These protections, in the form of increased trust in new-age technologies, skilled labour, and national governance structures, will help enable land and water resources for optimum consumption and sustainable production.
• In India’s attempt to reach a US$ 5-trillion economy and form a manufacturing hub, resilience and sustainability of the industrial sector are necessary. Using geospatial technologies integrated with current methodologies is the next imperative step.

Source: Orfonline

Mains Question:

Q. With growing water scarcity and climate change, it is imperative to sustainably integrate water into overall industrial planning and management practices. Discuss.(250 words).