In many areas of the United States and multiple regions of the world, competing demands for fresh water outweigh sustainable supply. Water issues increasingly limit economic development, impact interdependent infrastructure (such as energy and agriculture), and are a fundamental source of conflict. The primary objectives of the Sandia Water Initiative are to:
In order to achieve our objectives, we develop science-based, engineering solutions, guided by robust understanding of natural and human engineered systems.
The focus areas for the Water Security program are below. To learn more about each program, click on the links below.
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Water Infrastructure SecuritySandia’s Water Infrastructure Security Program has the experience, expertise and resources to address the demands of protecting our nation’s critical water infrastructures. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are able to leverage over 60 years of experience in safeguarding complex systems and focus that research base on our nation’s infrastructure to solve our most challenging water security challenges. |
Water TreatmentSandia applies its internationally recognized capabilities in materials science, systems engineering, and waste management programs to the challenges of water treatment. Unique laboratory and testing capabilities, expertise in materials and nanoscience, modeling and high performance computing, and advanced manufacturing enables us to make significant contributions to solving water treatment problems. Sandia communicates extensively with water users, suppliers, and regulators to best understand the issues and to optimize proposed solutions. |
Water, Energy and Natural Resource SystemsWe support long term planning and management of resources at the international, federal, state and regional levels through the development of decision support models and tools. Because the interactions and interdependencies among multiple Earth systems over time are complex they can’t be well understood without computer simulations. Models created by Sandia researchers allow stakeholders to conceptualize these complex systems and are a valuable tool for educating policy makers and the public on the complexities of resource management. |
ContactSean McKenna |
ContactAmy Halloran |
ContactVince Tidwell |
Sandia National Laboratories partners with the United States Environmental Protection Agency whose mission is to protect human health and the environment. Through a partnership with the EPA’s National Homeland Security Research Center (NHSRC), Sandia developed a risk assessment methodology for assessing the vulnerability of the physical infrastructure of water systems in our nation’s largest cities after 9/11. Since then, Sandia has worked with EPA-NHSRC to develop a number of software tools for enhanced monitoring of water distribution networks and response to contamination events in these networks.
In a partnership between the American Water Works Association (Awwa) Research Foundation (AwwaRF) and Sandia National Laboratories, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) undertook a program in 2000 to improve security at water utilities across the United States. Sandia has also worked with AwwaRF (now the Water Research Foundation or WaterRF) to assess the impacts of water quality sensor precision and accuracy on the results of water quality event detection algorithms.
Through the use of Sandia’s CANARY event detection software, Singapore’s national water authority PUB has made a quantum leap in their utility’s practices to uncover water quality events. By partnering with Sandia, PUB has dramatically improved their ability to respond to water quality changes and allows them to arrest poor quality water before it reaches consumers. Ongoing work with PUB is focused on real time identification of contaminant source locations for grab sample data.
Dr. Carl Laird and his research group in the Chemical Engineering Department continue to work with us on computational tools for analysis of water distribution networks. Current work being done at Texas A&M University is focused on efficient methods for solute transport in networks and optimization of sample locations during a contamination event.
How does a country whose water supply is as dispersed as the U.S. rapidly and accurately detect contamination of any of it, whether due to natural causes or terrorist activities? Sandia researchers, led by Sean McKenna working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Homeland Security Research Center, have developed award winning software that enables immediate contaminant detection by continuously analyzing signals from networked sensors for unusual responses.
A joint research team led by Susan Rempe of Sandia National Laboratories and researchers from the University of New Mexico have developed novel biomimetic membranes to purity water through reverse osmosis (RO) technology. These membranes will improve access to clean water, which may be the most important issue facing people worldwide because of its critical role in public health, agriculture and the production of energy.
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Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
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