LIFT Celebrates 5 Years and Releases Survey Visualization Tool

The Leaders Innovation Forum for Technology (LIFT) celebrates its fifth year of helping to bring innovation into practice.

The Leaders Innovation Forum for Technology (LIFT), which this year celebrates its fifth anniversary of helping to bring innovation into practice, has issued the 2017 Water Technology Survey Visualization Tool.

LIFT — a joint Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Va.) and Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF; Alexandria, Va.) initiative — has helped more than 100 companies deploy their technologies and facilitate collaboration among water resource recovery facilities since its launch. The survey and visualization tools help utilities better understand technology deployment across the water sector.

The LIFT visualization tool shows wastewater technology solutions that water resource recovery facilities are using. Photo courtesy of the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF; Alexandria, Va.).

Led and coordinated by WE&RF, the survey attempts to identify current and future trends in water technology. More than 100 respondents representing various aspects of the water sector including wastewater, stormwater, drinking water, desalination, and water reuse have participated. Throughout 2017, utility representatives can participate in the survey to share innovative technologies of interest to the water sector and to determine their implementation status. The survey results will be used to identify common interests, networking opportunities, knowledge sharing, strategic focuses, and potential collaborations across the sector. WE&RF plans to reissue the survey within the next 2–3 years to monitor and assess the continued adoption of water innovation.

In this map, the LIFT visualization tool shows stormwater technologies that survey participants have implemented. Photo courtesy of WE&RF.

The initial results of the survey have been compiled into the data visualization tool. Survey respondents, WE&RF members, and WEF members can access this tool online. The tool illustrates the percentage of respondents that have deployed or are planning to deploy a technology, this deployment’s timeframe, and the speed at which new technology evolves into standard practice. Users can look at data based on facility type, size, location, and technology. This tool will be updated regularly to reflect newly collected data.

For more information, contact Fidan Karimova, the LIFT Water Technology collaboration manager, at fkarimova@werf.org.