Articles

Provision of clean water is one of the most important issues worldwide because of continuing economic development and the steady increase in the global population. However, clean water resources are decreasing everyday, because of contamination with various pollutants including organic chemicals. Pharmaceutical and personal care products, herbicides/pesticides, dyes, phenolics, and aromatics (from sources such as spilled oil) are typical organics that should be removed from water.

Agricultural systems models worldwide are increasingly being used to explore options and solutions for the food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation and carbon trading problem domains. APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) is one such model that continues to be applied and adapted to this challenging research agenda.

Globally, an estimated 748million people remain without access to improved sources of drinking water and close to 1 billion people practice open defecation (WHO/UNICEF, 2014). The lack of access to safe water and adequate sanitation presents significant health and development challenges to individuals and communities, especially in low and middle income countries. Recent research indicates that aside from financial challenges, the lack of social capital is a barrier to collective action for community based water and sanitation initiatives (Levison etal., 2011; Bisung and Elliott, 2014).