4.2.17 (HL)—Industrial-level water stress solutions

Classify an industrial option by its job: store, transfer, produce, treat, reuse or manage groundwater.

Dams and estuary barrages store; pipelines and tankers transfer; desalination, solar distillation and dew harvesting produce freshwater; treatment enables reuse; aquifer storage and recovery stores surplus underground for later extraction, while artificial recharge replenishes an aquifer without guaranteeing recovery of the same water. Cloud seeding depends strongly on atmospheric conditions.

A city with wastewater but limited rivers should consider treatment and reuse before a pipeline from a distant basin.

Storage and recovery plan surplus water; recharge may replenish groundwater without recovering the same volume.

Technology names do not answer suitability; match the job, source, energy, ecology and governance.