The Water Data Podcast

Why Safe Drinking Water Is More Than a Technology Problem with Isha Ray

What does it actually take to provide safe and affordable drinking water for everyone? And if households must store, filter, boil or buy water before they can safely drin

Why More Water Won't Fix Water Scarcity with Newsha Ajami

How does saving water create a financial crisis for the utilities that supply it? And why do cities continue building water systems based on laws, infrastructure, and cli

How does the world measure water? with Maggie Kossida

What does it mean to measure water for the entire planet? Who collects the data behind SDG 6? And how do numbers from hundreds of countries become a global picture of wat

Can Data Help Communities Govern Water with Aaditeshwar Seth

What if technology was designed not to manage communities, but to strengthen their voice and agency? In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Professor Aaditeshwar Set

Water Security: 80 Years of Global Water Policy with Dr Roberto Lenton

Where did the idea of “water security” come from? How did countries around the world come to agree on shared goals for drinking water, sanitation, river basin management

Water Accounting across Scales with Wim Bastiannsen

How can satellites measure crop water use from space? Can they help farmers irrigate more precisely, improve yields, and make water distribution fairer across canal syste

The Deep Politics of Canal Irrigation in India with Peter Mollinga

Why do canal irrigation systems repeatedly produce head-tail inequality? Why do some farmers receive reliable water while others are systematically deprived for decades?

California's Groundwater Governance Successes | Dr. Maurice Hall

California’s groundwater crisis did not emerge overnight. Decades of unrestricted pumping, falling groundwater levels, land subsidence, disappearing streamflows, and recu

The Hidden Politics of Water Systems | Margreet Zwarteveen

Why is water never just a technical problem? Who gets water, who loses access, and who gets to decide? In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Professor Margreet Zwar

How Satellite Tech Imaged the Global Groundwater Crisis | James (Jay) Famiglietti

How can a satellite measure water buried deep underground? What can space-based observations tell us about groundwater depletion across the world? And how is this data sh

The Water Data Podcast is back with Season 3!

Listen to host Veena Srinivasan as she continues to talk to researchers, innovators, government officials and business leaders working on the forefront of water systems.

The Social Science of Water: Beyond Hydrology ft Trevor Birkenholtz | Water Data Podcast

What does water have to do with power, caste, labor, and economic policy? In this episode of the Water Data Podcast, Professor Trevor Birkenholtz (Penn State University)

Participatory Groundwater Management with Himanshu Kulkarni | The Water Data Podcast

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, host Veena Srinivasan speaks with Dr. Himanshu Kulkarni, hydrogeologist and co-founder of ACWADAM, about groundwater science in

Himanshu Kulkarni and Indian Hydrogeology | The Water Data Podcast

In this episode of The Water Data Podcast, host Veena Srinivasan speaks with Dr. Himanshu Kulkarni, hydrogeologist and co-founder of ACWADAM, about groundwater science in

The Art of Good Hydrological Modelling | Hubert Savenije

How can simple models explain the complexity of rivers, landscapes and water systems?  Why does hydrology sometimes struggle to connect theory and reality? In this episo

Nitrogen and Phosphorous Leave a Legacy of Water Pollution | Nandita Basu

When a lake turns green with algae, or nitrate shows up in drinking water, the most obvious question would be: Why can’t we fix this quickly? In this episode of the Wate

Eco-Hydrology with Jagdish Krishnaswamy

How do forests shape our water security? Why do rivers need to flow? And what happens to fish, turtles and gharials when dams shut off water? In this episode, host Veena

Creating Space for Water Collaboration with Henk Ovink

In this episode, host Veena Srinivasan speaks with Henk Ovink who is often called the world’s first “Water Diplomat” for a deep and wide-ranging conversation on trust, gl

Groundwater, Climate Resilience & Africa’s Aquifers with Richard Taylor | Ep 8

How should we understand groundwater in a warming world? Why has groundwater become the climate resilience resource for millions of people and what do we now know about h

Environmental Water flows with Kate Brauman and Sejal Worah

How do we balance the science of water flows with the spiritual and social lives that rivers sustain? What does it mean to define “environmental flows” in a country where