>>live from Stanford University. It's the queue covering Stanford women in data science 2020. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >>Yeah, yeah, and welcome to the Cube. I'm your host Sonia Category and we're live at Stanford University, covering the fifth annual Woods Women in Data Science Conference. Joining us today is new Sha Ajami, who's the director of urban water policy for Stanford. You should welcome to the Cube. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about your role. So >>I directed around water policy program at Stanford. We focused on building solutions for resilient cities to try to use data science and also the mathematical models to better understand how water use is changing and how we can build a future cities and infrastructure to address the needs of the people in the US, in California and across the world. >>That's great. And you're gonna give a talk today about how to build water security using big data. So give us a preview of your talk. >>Sure. So the 20th century water infrastructure model was very much of a >>top down model, >>so we built solutions or infrastructure to bring water to people, but people were not part of the loop. They were not the way that they behaved their decision making process. What they used, how they use it wasn't necessarily part of the process and the assume. There's enough water out there to bring water to people, and they can do whatever they want with it. So what we're trying to do is you want to change this paradigm and try to make it more bottom up at to engage people's decision making process and the uncertainty associated with that as part of the infrastructure planning process. Until I'll be talking, I'll talk a little bit about that. >>And where is the most water usage coming from? So, >>interestingly enough, in developed world, especially in the in the western United States, 50% of our water is used outdoors for grass and outdoor spacing, which we don't necessarily are dependent on. Our lives depend on it. I'll talk about the statistics and my talk, but grass is the biggest club you're going in the US while you're not really needing it for food consumption and also uses four times more water >>than than >>corn, which is which is a lot of water. And in California alone, if you just think about some of the spaces that we have grass or green spaces, we have our doors in the in. The in the malls are institutional buildings or different outdoor spaces. We have some of that water. If we can save, it can provide water for about a 1,000,000 or two million people a year. So that's a lot of water that we can be able to we can save and use, or you are actually a repurpose for needs that you really half. >>So does that also boil down to like people of watering their own lawns? Or is the problem for a much bigger grass message? >>Actually, interestingly enough, that's only 10% of that water out the water use. The rest of it is actually the residential water use, which is what you and I, the grass you and I have in our backyard and watering it so that water is even more than that amount that I mentioned. So we use a lot of water outdoors and again. Some of these green spaces are important for community building for making sure everybody has access to green spaces and people. Kids can play soccer or play outdoors, but really our individual lawns and outdoor spaces. If there are not really a native you know landscaping, it's not something that views enough to justify the amount of water you use for that purpose. >>So taking longer showers and all the stuff is very minimal compared to no, not >>at all. Sure, those are also very, very important. That's another 50% of our water. They're using that urban areas. It is important to be mindful the baby wash dishes. Maybe take shower the baby brush rt. They're not wasting water while you're doing that. And a lot of other individual decisions that we make that can impact water use on a daily basis. >>Right, So So tell us a little bit more about right now in California, We just had a dry February was the 1st 150 years, and you know, this is a huge issue for cities, agriculture and for potential wildfires. So tell us about your opinion about that. So, >>um, the 20th century's infrastructure model I mentioned at the beginning One of the flaws in that system is that it assumes that we will have enough snow in the mountains that would melt during the spring and summer time and would provide us water. The problem is, climate change has really, really impacted that assumption, and now you're not getting as much snow, which is comes back to the fact that this February we have not received any snow. We're still in the winter and we have spring weather and we don't really have much snow on the mountain. Which means that's going to impact the amount of water we have for summer and spring time this year. We had a great last year. We got enough water in our reservoirs, which means that you can potentially make it through. But then you have consecutive years that are dry and they don't receive a lot of water precipitation in form of snow or rain. That will become a very problematic issue to meet future water demands in California. >>And do you think this issue is along with not having enough rainfall, but also about how we store water, or do you think there should be a change in that policy? >>Sure, I think that it definitely has something also in the way we store water and be definitely you're in the 21st century. We have different problems and challenges. It's good to think about alternative ways off a storing water, including using groundwater sources. Groundwater as a way off, storing excess water or moving water around faster and making sure we use every drop of water that falls on the ground and also protecting our water supplies from contamination or pollution. >>And you see it's ever going to desalination or to get clean water. So, interestingly >>enough, I think desalination definitely has worth in other parts of the world, and then they have. Then you have smaller population or you have already tapped out of all the other options that are available to you. Desalination is expensive. Solution costs a lot of money to build this infrastructure and also again depends on you know, this centralized approach that we will build something and provide resources to people from from that location. So it's very costly to build this kind of solutions. I think for for California we still have plenty of water that we can save and repurpose, I would say, and also we still can do recycling and reuse. We can capture our stone water and reuse it, so there's so many other, cheaper, more accessible options available before you go ahead and build a desalination plants >>and you're gonna be talking about sustainable water resource management. So tell us a little bit more about that, too. So the thing with >>water mismanagement and occasionally I use also the word like building resilient water. Future is all about diversifying our water supply and being mindful of how they use our water, every drop of water that use its degraded on. It needs to be cleaned up and put back in the environment, so it always starts from the bottom. The more you save, the less impact you have on the environment. The second thing is you want to make sure every trouble wanted have used. We can use it as many times possible and not make it not not. Take it, use it, lose its right away, but actually be able to use it multiple times for different purposes. Another point that's very important, as actually majority of the water they've used on a daily basis is it doesn't need to be extremely clean drinking water quality. For example, if you tell someone that you're flushing down our toilets. Drinkable water would surprise you that we would spend this much time and resources and money and energy to clean that water to flush it down the toilet video using it. So So basically rethinking the way we built this infrastructure model is very important, being able to tailor water to the needs that we have and also being mindful of Have you use that resource? >>So is your research focus mainly on California or the local community? We actually >>are solutions that we built on our California focus. Actually, we try to build solutions that can be easily applied to different places. Having said that, because you're working from the bottom up, wavy approach water from the bottom up, you need to have a local collaboration and local perspective to bring to their to this picture on. A lot of our collaborators have been so far in California, we have had data from them. We were able to sort of demonstrate some of the assumptions we had in California. But we work actually all over the world. We have collaborators in Europe in Asia and they're all trying to do the same thing that we dio on. You're trying to sort of collaborate with them on some of the projects in other parts of the world. >>That's awesome. So going forward, what do you hope to see with sustainable water management? So, to >>be honest with you, I would often we think about technology as a way that would solve all our problems and move us out of the challenges we have. I would say technology is great, but we need to really rethink the way we manager resource is on the institutions that we have on there. We manage our data and information that we have. And I really hope that became revolutionized that part of the water sector and disrupt that part because as we disrupt this institutional part >>on the >>system, provide more system level thinking to the water sector, I'm hoping that that would change the way we manage our water and then actually opens up space for some of these technologies to come into play as >>we go forward. That's awesome. So before we leave here, you're originally from Tehran. Um and and now you're in this data science industry. What would you say to a kid who's abroad, who wants to maybe move here and have a career in data science? >>I would say Study hard, Don't let anything to disk or do you know we're all equal? Our brains are all made the same way. Doesn't matter what's on the surface. So, um so I and encourage all the girls study hard and not get discouraged and fail as many times as you can, because failing is an opportunity to become more resilient and learn how to grow. And, um and I have, and I really hope to see more girls and women in this in these engineering and stem fields, to be more active on, become more prominent. >>Have you seen a large growth within the past few years? Definitely, >>the conversation is definitely there, and there are a lot more women, and I love how Margot and her team are sort of trying to highlight the number of people who are out there. And working on these issues because that demonstrates that the field wasn't necessarily empty was just not not highlighted as much. So for sure, it's very encouraging to see how much growth you have seen over the years for sure >>you shed. Thank you so much. It's really inspiring all the work you do. Thank you for having me. So no, Absolutely nice to meet you. I'm Senator Gary. Thanks for watching the Cube and stay tuned for more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.