Linking Water Technologies with Water Practices: Case Studies from 11 Countries

Radical transformations of technology development are required to meet the rapidly increasing global water resource challenges. A systemic understanding of the impacts of water technologies on water practices across countries remains limited. This paper aims to develop an understanding of the linkages between water technologies and water practices in the 11 countries where 95% of the world’s water patents were produced. The water technological development was assessed by both the contents (different types of technologies) and the structure (the technology network). The water practices were presented by country-level indicators representing their water demand, water supply, and water management collected from public databases. It was found that there was an extremely uneven distribution with the top 3 countries (China, Korea, Japan) accounting for over 70% of the total patents, and there were slow growth rates and even a decline of water technologies. All countries demonstrated homogeneous technological development focusing on water supply, and their networks had limited brokerage capacity for knowledge diffusion. Australia, China, Canada, France, and Korea had relatively good links between water technologies and practices, whereas the majority of countries demonstrated unbalanced technological structures with a de-linking to water practices. These findings can assist in developing water technologies for improving water practices in future.