This report originally appeared on GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

In the emerging vision for the smart city of tomorrow, we often hear about next generation smart grids, smarter buildings that manage themselves to conserve resources, and smart transportation systems that will lessen congestion.

In fact, Pike Research’s Eric Woods recent report for GigaOM Pro, “Key Technologies for the Future of the Smart City” (subscription required) estimated that the global market for smart city investments will reach $16 billion by 2020 with heavy growth in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

But we hear much less about smart water systems for the smart city, and the need to develop more efficient approaches to water as a resource. Part of this is basic developed world bias. A brief look at the U.N.’s freshwater availability map shows that nations with water stress (less than 1700 cubic meters per person per year) and water scarcity (less than a 1000) are mainly found in the Middle East, parts of Africa, China and Southeast Asia. Most of the developed world has been lucky enough to grow up in areas of relative water abundance.

Urbanization is accelerating, however, with a billion and half people expected to move to the city in the next 20 years, and McKinsey has predicted that by 2030 water consumption will increase by 40 percent. There have been signs of problems in international megacities like Mexico City where 5 million residents awoke to dry taps in 2009 and Mumbai where 5,000 tankers deliver 50 million liters of water each day, the precious resource going to the highest bidders. Even domestically, many continue to point out that with less than 15 inches of annual rainfall and its dependence on water from the Colorado River, where demand is expected to overwhelm supply in the next half century, Los Angeles’s water supply is risky.

One of the first implementations of smart water systems is smart water meters. A report last year pegged the European smart water meter market at 13 billion pounds by 2020, which is interesting given the fact that there are far fewer top down government mandates for smart water meter deployment than there have been for smart meters for the electricity grid. By 2030 Britain hopes to have all homes installed with smart water meters, which utilities use to identify leaks, create peak pricing mechanisms to incentivize conservation, and catch people who are violating water use restrictions. Designs are already circulating that sync water meters with iPads to give users up to the minute info on their water use, which could drive home to consumers the cost of watering that lawn.

Woods’s report for GigaOM Pro examined next generation greenfield communities like Masdar City in the United Arab Emerates (UAE). Masdar City use 54 percent less water than the average UAE city and Woods notes that the city is deploying diverse strategies from micro-irrigation to treated wastewater for landscaping to highly efficient water fittings. The goal is to get to 180 liters per day per person from the current norm of 550 liters per person per day in the UAE.

But in the developing world, where 1 billion of the 3 billion global urban dwellers live in slums with limited access to clean water and additional water management challenges brought on by climate change induced flooding and droughts, the solutions may be less technological. The solutions in the urban developing world revolve around limiting demand, reducing pollution to the water ecosystem, and preventing leakage from aging infrastructure. Though there is evidence that municipalities are starting to take the initiative, as the city of Mumbai has been working with global meter giant Itron to deploy advance water metering infrastructure. One of the issues is how expensive water has become for the urban poor. A slum dweller in Nairobi, Kenya pays 5 to 7 times more for a liter of water than the average North American.

For the first time in history more Chinese now live in cities than in rural areas with per capita income for Chinese city dwellers three times that of rural citizens. The economic drivers of urbanization will remain strong which means cities will have to get more intelligent in their management of water resources. And that goes for all cities, from Mumbai to LA.

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NanoH20 has been working on nanotechnology-enabled reverse-osmosis membranes for desalinating water (cleaning it to use) that are supposed to be more productive and use less energy than traditional desalination membranes. The problem with standard reverse osmosis is that it is energy-intensive, and that makes it costly.

For traditional desalination, large amounts of electricity is often used to pump water around and force it, under very high pressure, through membranes. The Pacific Institute estimates that electricity accounts for 44 percent of the cost of standard reverse-osmosis desalination, which is by far the single-largest expense.

NanoH2O says its membrane is much more permeable than the standard technology, which is the key to the less energy and lower costs needed to clean the water. The company has been working on desalination projects, including one with a water utility in the Cayman Islands called Water Authority Cayman and with the U.S. Navy Seawater Desalination Test Facility (SDTF) in Port Hueneme, Calif.

The company focuses on seawater desalination and says in its release on Monday that it will also target China, which it says will be one of the world’s largest markets for desalination technology. With this $40 million in equity funding and $20.5 million in credit facilities, NanoH20 says it is one of the most “highly funded water technology companies in the industry.”

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This week Pluggd.in, an Indian site focused on Indian entrepreneurs and startups, profiled a startup called RealTech Systems which has developed an irrigation control system for farmers that uses cell phone networks and missed calls. Essentially a farmer installs the company’s Real Mobile Starter Control product at an irrigation pump, and the device uses a SIM card and a missed call to turn the pump on and off remotely.

The problem, as Pluggd.in puts it, is that many farmers have to walk many miles to get to the pumps for their farms, but once they reach the pump sometimes the power to run the irrigation system isn’t available — unreliable power is one of the biggest infrastructure problems throughout much of India. The farmers can use the product to check to see if power in the area is turned on, and then run the irrigation accordingly — from miles away.

As I explained in an article late last year after a reporting trip to India with the Geeks on a Plane group, the missed call ecosystem has emerged around the abundance of callers who aren’t willing to spend on making a call, or sending a text, so they call a company or friend to signal something pre-arranged — and that’s free. It’s very common across India and companies like Zipdial have developed the missed call into a platform for a host of services from advertising to delivery of goods to information. Picture a person who wants to buy tea calls up the local tea seller and sends him three missed calls to indicate he wants to buy three cups worth.

In the case of RealTech Systems they’re moving the missed call beyond just communication between companies and customers (or between friends) and linking it to resource management. Helping companies and people more smartly manage resources like energy and water will also be a very important trend in the coming years for the country and its 1.2 billion population.

Pluggd.in has a full interview with the founder of RealTech Systems, T. Kumar, so check that out.

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ET Water, based in Novato, Calif., is the water market counterpart to companies that develop devices and software for controlling electricity use at homes and businesses. The company’s hardware and software enables property owners and landscapers to fine-tune their land’s irrigation needs based on the area’s weather patterns, soil conditions, plants and other parameters. Users enter this type of data online to create an irrigation plan, which can be adjusted daily, Pat McIntyre, CEO of ET Water, explained to us in a phone interview.

A cloud-based server for the company stores this data, calibrates the amount of water needed and communicates that information to a two-way communication device and irrigation controller at the property.

The new round came from three existing and undisclosed investors. The round isn’t closed yet, though McIntyre declined to specify a fundraising goal. ET Water plans to use some of the new round to expand its distribution network nationally. Most of its products are sold in the western U.S. Its distributors include Imperial Technical Services in Los Angeles and Horizon Distributors based in Chandler, Ariz. Overall, ET Water has raised about $10 million since its inception, McIntyre said.

The company has been around since 2002 and launched its first set of products and services in 2006. It started with a product called SmartBox that replaces conventional irrigation controllers, which are essentially simple timers that can only be adjusted by hand. ET Water then introduced its SmartWorks product that was designed to fit into the box containing a conventional controller so that users can swap out the old components with the SmartWorks device.

The latest controller from ET Water no longer requires the replacement of the old controllers. Called HermitCrab, it’s a dongle that attaches to the existing controller to override the old settings and converts it to a smart controller, McIntyre said. HermitCrab is low cost and enables ET Water to target home owners, he added.

The company shipped its first batch of HermitCrab devices last week. ET WAter generates revenues by selling the hardware and a free first-year subscription to its software service to distributors of irrigation equipment. Software subscription for the following years runs $200 per year, McIntyre said. The company also licenses a smart phone application for $99 so that users can activate or suspend irrigation from wherever they are.

ET Water’s distributors generally market the HermitCrab for about $800. SmartWorks runs about $1,700 while SmartBox averages $2,000, McIntyre said.

Despite lots of talk about water being a precious commodity, it remains cheap enough to not become a worry. Water management technology wouldn’t become popular without a greater awareness by consumers and businesses to conserve its use. Other smart water controller developers include HydroPoint Data Systems. In a related market, EnerNOC recently bought M2M Communications, whose equipment turns down pumps and irrigation systems at farms and utilities to conserve electricity, a bulk of which is used by farms and other businesses to move water.

Landscaping accounts for about 50 percent of the water use in the western U.S. and “half of that is wasted,” McIntyre said. He said more cities and water districts are implementing tiered pricing systems that charge heavy users higher rates. States such as California are requiring water agencies to reduce per-capita water consumption, and that also will nudge water service providers to use tiered pricing to encourage conservation.

Photo courtesy of John Schanlaub via Flickr.

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The French environmental engineering giant launched its Veolia Innovation Accelerator (VIA) program last year, but Tuesday’s announcement at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco is the first time it has named any partners. Veolia isn’t making equity investments in the startups, but with its size and scope — 315,000 employees in 77 countries and annual revenues of about $46 billion — it still has a lot to offer them in terms of technical support and access to markets.

In the case of GreenRoad, for example, Veolia has been piloting the startup’s technology in buses operating in Atlanta, Ga. for the past six months. GreenRoad’s vehicle-embedded computers, GPS and cellular connections and web site monitoring system save fuel, reduce emissions and reduce accidents. (See our video interview with GreenRoad for our Green Overdrive show below).

Veolia’s transportation projects are significant, and could get even larger as Veolia completes its merger with French transport giant Transdev, which will create a company with sales of 8 billion euros ($10.6 billion).

Phillipe Martin, Veolia’s senior vice president of research and innovation, also said that Veolia could see immediate uses in its wastewater treatment business from startup Ostara, which makes technology that separates phosphorous from wastewater to turn it into fertilizer. Likewise, Veolia partner Advanced Cyclone Systems, or ACS, a Portuguese startup that separates particles from gases for pollution control or reuse in biomass conversion and gasification projects, will be installing its technology in Veolia biomass-to-energy projects in Europe.

Another Veolia partner is French startup Envolure, which makes environmental diagnostic kits that can detect and identify organic components of waste streams about 10 times cheaper and faster than competing technologies, said Marie-Anne Brodschii, vice president of innovation at Veolia Environment. The startup is looking at designing kits specifically for Veolia and testing them in pilot projects including those Veolia is setting up with Ostara, Yves Dudal, Envolure president and co-founder, said.

The final Veolia partner announced Tuesday, the CoSMo Company, is involved in a more experimental part of Veolia’s business — the linking of water, waste, transportation and energy management systems in a city-wide environment. The startup cut its teeth in software modeling of complex systems for the biotech industry, but plans to develop modeling tools for Veolia to use in organizing its business lines into an integrated whole, CoSMo CEO Hugues de Bantel said at the Tuesday event.

That sounds a bit like the work IBM, Cisco and Microsoft are doing to connect city networks and IT systems into an integrated whole. Veolia is best known for its water and waste treatment expertise, but it’s also doing quite a bit of work in smart grid-type systems, including its “Reflexe” project in southern France, where it’s integrating systems from French power giant Alstom and French consumer electronics company Sagemcom.

Image courtesy of Carlos62 via Creative Commons license.

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Concerns About Hong Kong Water Security: A series of droughts in China has raised concerns that Hong Kong’s water supply is threatened by climate change and pollution, has growing demand from surrounding industries, so it might not be as secure as first thought. — NYT’s Green Inc.

Senate Climate Fight: Tough as Healthcare Reform: Assembling a climate and energy package that can be shoehorned into the election-year calendar will be every bit as tough for Senate Democrats when they return in January as crafting the healthcare bill. — The Hill

Abengoa Considers Billion Euro Bond Sale: “Abengoa SA, Spain’s largest developer of solar-thermal power plants, is considering selling as much as 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of bonds to finance more installations and reduce its dependence on banks.” — Bloomberg via BusinessWeek

Pacific Lake Opens Eyes Fund for Young Entrepreneurs: Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm Pacific Lake Partners is looking to raise $35 million for a fund that will specifically target recent business school grads looking to buy and turn around other people’s startups. — VentureBeat’s GreenBeat

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As a result, the tide of water infotech is rising fast, and just as the smart grid buildout could be one of the largest creators of wealth in the decade, there are billions to be made in smarter water systems. Lux finds the market for water IT is set to grow to a $16.3 billion in 2020, up from just $530 million today.

Water distribution often relies on sprawling, complex systems, and water managers today often work with spotty knowledge about what is happening in their systems on a real-time basis. Water information technologies in the five segments identified by Lux — water mapping, infrastructure, quality monitoring, smart meters and smart irrigation — could change that. Benefits would extend not only to utilities, but also to industries, consumers and governments in several ways, says Lux: minimizing unaccounted-for water, reducing consumption, limiting pollution and cutting energy use (water and energy use are closely linked, since it takes energy to treat and deliver water, and most of the time it takes water to create energy).

A number of startups are active in this market and have attracted venture capital investment. But they face high barriers to entry as a result of entrenched companies and utilities preferring to work with known players. The startups that succeed in this space, predicts Lux, will be those providing highly innovative solutions. The research firm notes TraceDetect, which offers a web-based display of real-time arsenic concentrations in drinking water, as an example.

For startups and larger firms alike, Lux sees “the real winners” being companies that provide tech that addresses several or all of the five market segments in an integrated way. The bulk of the profit, meanwhile, will go to systems integrators such as IBM, which splashed into water management this year with a new sensor-based system that automatically collects important data (water quality, pump rates, water use at meters), analyzes the data and then packages it into easy-to-consume formats for water mangers to evaluate.

As Eliot Metzger, co-author of a report from the World Resources Institute on the relationship between water and energy use, told us earlier this year, water utilities (like electric utilities) typically plan about 5-10 years in advance, taking into account variables such as population growth, supply and demand — but it’s time to pick up the pace. “Climate change will affect those supplies,” Metzger said, “and I think a lot of the water utilities at least are going to be hit with some surprises.” Integrating water management and IT sooner, rather than later, could help lessen the challenge.

Photo courtesy of Flickr

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Apple announced a slew of hardware updates today, including a number of upgrades to its notebook lineup.

For me, the most notable among these was the upwards shift of the 13-inch aluminum MacBook into the MacBook Pro category, alongside the 15- and 17-inch models, both of which also got their own feature and hardware improvements. The white, plastic polycarbonate MacBook is looking mighty lonely down at the low end of the scale.

Alongside the name change, the 13-inch MacBook Pro (I’m glad I no longer have to specify “unibody” or anything else to distinguish it from the regular white MacBook anymore) gets an SD card slot, up to 8GB (if you’re partial to a $1,000 upgrade) of memory, a max hard drive size of 500GB (or 256GB SSD), and a backlit keyboard, standard.

Also, making a triumphant return, is FireWire thanks to an FW800 port, as is standard for the Pro line of computers. All this at a new entry-level price point of $1,199, which comes standard with a 2.26GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB HDD. Another higher-priced option with a 2.53GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 250GB HDD goes for $1,499.

The price drop, combined with the spec upgrade, makes this one of Apple’s most appealing machines to those of us who are cost-conscious Mac addicts. Add in the inclusion of the same battery tech that was first introduced in the 17-inch MacBook Pro, with a reported battery life of seven hours (likely exaggerated), and I’m sold. If you’re an education customer, you get another $100 off, bringing the total price of the laptop to $1,099 before taxes. Someone’s going shopping later today, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’s me.

I’d wait for Snow Leopard to come out in September, but with $29 upgrade pricing, and a $49 family pack (I have three Macs), there’s not really any cause to wait. One might argue that not enough has changed with this upgrade to justify slapping the “Pro” moniker onto the end of the name, but honestly, the company cut the price along with the title rather than raising it, so I’m not complaining. I seriously believe that this is the best value proposition in Apple’s lineup as it stands, especially given that it’s still relatively easy to upgrade RAM and hard disk (compared with the Mac mini) on your own — much cheaper than it would cost to do so with Apple-installed components.

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Energy Star for Data Centers: Mike Zatz, chief of the market sectors group for Energy Star, answers questions about the new efficiency ratings for data centers. — Data Center Knowledge

Mojave, Mo’ Problems: A National Park Service official warns that approving an estimated 63 large-scale solar projects in the Mojave Desert could dramatically impact water supplies across the region because of groundwater used to cool and wash the solar panels. — Greenwire via New York Times

Gingrich-Gore Showdown: The House energy committee added former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to the lineup of witnesses, which includes former Vice President Al Gore, for today’s hearing on the climate bill. — The Hill

Tesla, Tata Suggest Two Auto Futures: Silicon Valley’s Tesla Motors and India’s Tata Motors are the opposite poles of a mobile future: electric luxury on one side and semigreen basic transportation on the other. — Slate’s Big Money

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Here’s how the Great White North compared with the U.S. in February.

Of course, in terms of sheer size, the U.S. dominates, with 145 million unique viewers watching 13.1 billion videos in February. But pound for pound, that 88 percent figure represents the highest penetration among the five countries (Canada, U.S., UK, Germany, France) on which comScore Video Metrix reports. Take off, hoser! Online video in Canada is a beauty way to go! (OK, that was the last one.)

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