Today the world faces a growing crisis over the management of its great rivers. In recent years, most of the great rivers in the world, such as the Yellow River in China, the Indus, the Colorado, and the Nile, have all periodically run empty because mankind has used their every last drop. Indeed, there is a huge unmet demand in the world for water. More than a billion people have no access to clean drinking water, and while it is hoped that this figure will be halved by 2015, nobody is sure where the water will come from. With today’s trends, one-third of the world population will be seriously short of water by 2025. Politicians in China, India, Pakistan, Egypt and other water- stressed countries want their water engineers to find solutions – and fast.