Where Water Meets Artificial IntelligenceAs part of the new Water-AI Nexus Center of Excellence collaboration, The Water Center at Penn is helpi...

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Where Water Meets Artificial IntelligenceAs part of the new Water-AI Nexus Center of Excellence collaboration, The Water Center at Penn is helpi...
Where Water Meets Artificial Intelligence
As part of the new Water-AI Nexus Center of Excellence collaboration, The Water Center at Penn is helping answer key questions around technology and sustainability.

October 13, 2025
An industrial scene shows a water utility plant at work
An automated reverse osmosis water treatment plant applies energy-efficient techniques to the contaminated water it processes, allowing for industrial reuse. These are the sorts of processes proponents hope AI will help improve.

Many questions sit at the intersection of artificial intelligence and water. How can AI infrastructure use the resource efficiently and sustainably? On the flip side, how can AI technologies address water issues like scarcity and chemical contamination? A new partnership linking The Water Center at Penn, Amazon, the Water Environment Federation (WEF), and the Leading Utilities of the World, a global network of water and wastewater utilities, seeks to find answers.

Unveiled in late September during the largest annual climate event in the United States—Climate Week NYC—the Water-AI Nexus Center of Excellence has two major focuses: ensuring that AI infrastructure isn’t running through water at an untenable rate, while simultaneously using rapidly growing AI technologies to address myriad water challenges.

“We need to adapt and build resilience in the face of climate change, and water has a big part to play,” offers Howard Neukrug, a professor of practice in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and Executive Director of the Water Center at Penn. “And while water is a global issue, the solutions and problems both tend to be very local.”

Neukrug, former Commissioner and CEO of Philadelphia Water before coming to Penn, has been thinking about regional water challenges for a long time. Of late, he’s had countless conversations about the issues and opportunities AI poses for the water industry. The Water-AI Nexus Center of Excellence collaboration emerged through such discussions in the field.

We need to adapt and build resilience in the face of climate change, and water has a big part to play.

WEF has deep relationships with utility companies and initially connected with Amazon about working together, eventually bringing in The Water Center for its research expertise and familiarity with how water issues can affect vulnerable populations. “They wanted an academic arm with an understanding of communities and affordability,” Neukrug says. “At the Water Center, we have experience with looking at how everyone can afford clean drinking water and sanitation, so we bring that to the table.”

AI has repeatedly made headlines for the sustainability issues it poses, namely because of its staggering energy consumption. Some of that comes from mineral extraction (to build the tech in the first place) and e-waste, but the majority is due to the energy AI requires while running its models, a process that in turn requires massive amounts of water for data centers to cool off. In an early report, Water-AI Nexus noted that the typical annual water use for an average-sized U.S. data center is around 41 million gallons.

Neukrug says probing that issue will be a top priority for the new partnership. Water-AI Nexus plans to work with building architects, gaining a sense of the cooling systems used by data centers and examining ways to make their processes more efficient, from reusing water to ensuring optimized usage.

But the partnership is also focused on the benefits AI can bring to an industry that has long struggled with outdated pipes and computer systems. “The hot topic right now in the news is on the ‘water for AI’ side, the water demands of data centers. It’s true that’s a critical component we need to address,” says Neukrug. “But it’s also really important to think about the future of AI use in water work and all of the ways that could reshape this space.”

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https://omnia.sas.upenn.edu/story/where-water-meets-artificial-intelligence

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